
Book _i_J ^ — 



PUKSENTEl) BY 



EACH VOLITME^SjOJ^P-jgBI»4:BATELY. 




COLLECTION 

OF 

BRITISH AUTHORS 

TAUCHMTZ EDITION. 



YOL.1216. 
POETRY BY ELIZABETH BROWNING 

IN ONE VOLUME. 



LEIPZIG: BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ. 

PARTS*. C. REINWALD, 15, RUE DES SAINTS PERES. 



5^ • This Collection ' 

is published with copyright for Continental circulu 
purchasers are earnestly requested not to ifttrodu • 
into England or into any British C 






COLLECTION 

I 

OF 

BEITISH AUTHORS 

TAUCHNITZ EDITION. 

VOL. 1216. 
POETRY BY ELIZABETH B. BEOWNING. 

IN ONE VOLUME. 



TAUCHNITZ EDITION. 

By the same Author, 
AURORA LEIGH . 1 vol. 




lJ\A%AmMTf^][ JEAMMIE^TT IBlKl(D)WWEMOr. 



Le.ip7>ip;, BernliarcL Taiichnifa. 



A SELECTION 

FROM 

THE POETRY 

OF 



COPYRIGHT EDITION, 



WITH THE PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR. 



LEIPZIG 

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 

1872. 



,. A.\t^ 






Dr. John M^ Gitterman 
March 6 1934 



It has been attempted to retain and to dispose the characteristics of 
the general poetry y whence this is an abstract^ according to an order 
which should allow them the prominency and effect they seem to possess 
when considered in the larger, not exclusively the lesser works of the 
poet, A musician might say, such and such chords are repeated, 
others made subordinate by distribution, so that a single movement 
may imitate the progress of the whole symphony. But there are 
various ways of modulating up to and connecting any given har- 
monies; and it will be neither a surprise nor a pain to find that 
better could have been done, as to both selection and sequence, than^ 
in the present case, all care and the profoundest veneration were 
able to do, 

R.B. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Hector in the Garden 9 

The Romance of the Swan's Nest 13 

The Lost Bower , . . 16 

The Romaunt of the Page 31 

Rhyme of the Duchess May 43 

Bertha in the Lane 66 

Catarina to Camoens 75 

Lady Geraldine's Courtship 81 

Lord Walter's Wife 109 

Bianca among the Nightingales 113 

The Lay of the Brown Rosary 118 

A Reed . . 137 

To Flush, my Dog 138 

My Doves 142 

The Sea-Mew . . , . 145 

The Sleep 147 

Cowper's Grave 149 

Crowned and Buried . . . 153 

A Rhapsody of Life's Progress . . 159 

The Cry of the Children 165 

A Song for the Ragged Schools of London • 171 

A Lay of the Early Rose 176 

Wine of Cyprus . . 184 

The Cyclops 191 

Song of the Rose 195 

Anacreon's Ode to the Swallow . . 196 

The Dead Pan . . 1Q7 

Sonnets 207 

The Soul's Expression ......... 207 

Perplexed Music 208 

Work 208 



5 CONTENTS. 

Page 

Pain in Pleasure 209 

Flush or Faunus . . , . 209 

Finite and Infinite 210 

To George Sand — A Desire 210 

To George Sand — A Recognition. 211 

Life 211 

Question and Answer 212 

Inclusions , 213 

SonnetF from the Portuguese 214 

Calls on the Heart 237 

Confessions ............ 241 

A Man's Requirements 246 

The Lady's Yes . 248 

May's Love .... 249 

Amy's Cruelty .... 250 

My Kate . . 252 

A False Step ... 254 

The Mask . . . . 255 

A Year's Spinning ....... ... 257 

Change upon Change ... 259 

That Day 260 

Void in Law , 261 

My Heart and I 264 

The Best Thing in the World 266 

"Died" 267 

Only a Curl 269 

A Child's Grave at Florence 272 

Little Mattie . 277 

Napoleon III. in Italy 280 

First News from Villafranca 294 

A Tale of Villafranca 296 

A View across the Roman Campagna 299 

A Court Lady . . 301 

Parting Lovers 305 

Mother and Poet 308 

Nature's Remorses 312 

A Musical Instrument . . . 315 

The North and the South 317 



POETRY 

BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 



HECTOR IN THE GARDEN. 

Nine years old! The first of any 
Seem the happiest years that come: 
Yet when / was nine, I said 
No such word! I thought instead 

That the Greeks had used as many 
In besieging Ilium. 

Nine green years had scarcely brought me 

To my childhood's haunted spring; 

I had life, like flowers and bees 

In betwixt the country trees. 
And the sun the pleasure taught me 

Which he teacheth everything. 

If the rain fell, there was sorrow, 
Little head leant on the pane, 
Little finger drawing down it 
The long trailing drops upon it. 

And the "Rain, rain, come to-morrow," 
Said for charm against the rain. 



10 HECTOR IN THE GARDEN. 

Such a charm was right Canidian 
Though you meet it with a jeer! 
If I said it long enough, 
Then the rain hummed dimly off 
I And the thrush with his pure Lydian 
Was left only to the ear; 

And the sun and I together 

Went a-rushing out of doors: 

We our tender spirits drew 

Over hill and dale in view, 
Glimmering hither, glimmering thither, 

In the footsteps of the showers. 

Underneath the chestnuts dripping, 
Through the grasses wet and fair. 
Straight I sought my garden-ground 
With the laurel on the mound, 

And the pear-tree oversweeping 
A side-shadow of green air. 

In the garden lay supinely 

A huge giant wrought of spade! 

Arms and legs were stretched at length 

In a passive giant strength, — 

The fine meadow turf, cut finely. 
Round them laid and interlaid. 

Call him Hector, son of Priam! 

Such his title and degree. 

With my rake I smoothed his brow. 

Both his cheeks I weeded through, 
But a rhymer such as I am, 

Scarce can sing his dignity. 



HECTOR IN THE GARDEN. 1 1 

Eyes of gentianellas azure, 

Staring, winking at the skies; 

Nose of gillyflowers and box; 

Scented grasses put for locks, 
Which a little breeze at pleasure 

Set a-waving round his eyes: 

Brazen helm of daffodillies. 

With a glitter toward the light 

Purple violets for the mouth. 

Breathing perfumes west and south; 
And a sword of flashing lilies, 

Holden ready for the fight: 

And a breastplate made of daisies. 

Closely fitting, leaf on leaf; 

Periwinkles interlaced 

Drawn for belt about the waist; 
While the brown bees, humming praises, 

Shot their arrows round the chief. 

And who knows, (I sometimes wondered,) 

If the disembodied soul 

Of old Hector, once of Troy, 

Might not take a dreary joy 
Here to enter — if it thundered. 

Rolling up the thunder-roll? 

Rolling this way from Troy-ruin, 

In this body rude and rife 

Just to enter, and take rest 

'Neath the daisies of the breast — 
They, with tender roots, renewing 

His heroic heart to life? 



12 HECTOR IN THE GARDEN. 

Who could know? I sometimes started 

At a motion or a sound! 

Did his mouth speak — naming Troy 

With an otorororoi^ 
Did the pulse of the Strong-hearted 

Make the daisies tremble round? 

It was hard to answer, often: 
But the birds sang in the tree, 
But the little birds sang bold 
In the pear-tree green and old. 

And my terror seemed to soften 
Through the courage of their glee. 

Oh, the birds, the tree, the ruddy 

And white blossoms sleek with rain! 

Oh, my garden rich with pansies! 

Oh, my childhood's bright romances! 
All revive, like Hector's body. 

And I see them stir again. 

And despite life's changes, chances. 
And despite the deathbell's toll, 
They press on me in full seeming: 
Help, some angel! stay this dreaming! 

As the birds sang in the branches. 
Sing God's patience through my soul! 

That no dreamer, no neglecter 
Of the present's work unsped, 
I may wake up and be doing. 
Life's heroic ends pursuing, 

Though my past is dead as Hector, 
And though Hector is twice dead. 



THE ROMANCE OF THE SWANKS NEST. 



THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST. 

Little Ellie sits alone 
'Mid the beeches of a meadow 

By a stream-side on the grass, 

And the trees are showering down 
Doubles of their leaves in shadow 

On her shining hair and face. 

She has thrown her bonnet by, 
And her feet she has been dipping 

In the shallow water's flow: 

Now she holds them nakedly 
In her hands, all sleek and dripping. 

While she rocketh to and fro. 

Little Ellie sits alone. 
And the smile she softly uses 

Fills the silence like a speech 

While she thinks what shall be done. 
And the sweetest pleasure chooses 

For her future within reach. 

Little Ellie in her smile 
Chooses — "I will have a lover, 

Riding on a steed of steeds: 

He shall love me without guile, 
And to him I will discover 

The swan's nest among the reeds. 



14 THE ROMANCE OF THE SWANKS NEST, 

"And the steed shall be red-roan, 
And the lover shall be noble, 

With an eye that takes the breath: 

And the lute he plays upon 
Shall strike ladies into trouble. 

As his sword strikes men to death. 

"And the steed it shall be shod 
All in silver, housed in azure. 

And the mane shall swim the wind; 

And the hoofs along the sod 
Shall flash onward and keep measure, 

Till the shepherds look behind. 

"But my lover will not prize 
All the glory that he rides in, 

When he gazes in my face: 

He will say, *0 Love, thine eyes 
Build the shrine my soul abides in. 

And I kneel here for thy grace!' 

"Then, ay, then he shall kneel low, 
With the red-roan steed anear him 

Which shall seem to understand, 

Till I answer, *Rise and go! 
For the world must love and fear him 

Whom I gift with heart and hand.' 

"Then he will arise so pale, 
I shall feel my own lips tremble 

With ayes I must not say, 

Nathless maiden-brave, * Farewell,' 
I will utter, and dissemble — 

* Light to-morrow with to-day!' 



THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAN'S NEST. I5 

"Then he'll ride among the hills 
To the wide world past the river, 

There to put away all wrong; 

To make straight distorted wills, 
And to empty the broad quiver 

Which the wicked bear along. 

"Three times shall a young foot-page 
Swim the stream and climb the mountain 

And kneel down beside my feet^ 

^Lo, my master sends this gage, 
Lady, for thy pity's counting! 

What wilt thou exchange for it^ 

"And the first time, I will send 
A white rosebud for a guerdon. 

And the second time, a glove; 

But the third time — I may bend 
From my pride, and answer — Tardon, 

If he comes to take my love/ 

"Then the young foot-page will run, 
Then my lover will ride faster, 

Till he kneeleth at my knee: 

'I am a duke's eldest son. 
Thousand serfs do call me master, 

But, O Love, I love but theeT 

"He will kiss me on the mouth 
Then, and lead me as a lover 

Through the crowds that praise his deeds: 
And, when soul-tied by one troth, 

Unto him I will discover 

That swan's nest among the reeds " 



1 6 THE LOST BOWER. 

Little Ellie, with her smile 
Not yet ended, rose up gaily, 

Tied the bonnet, donned the shoe, 

And went homeward round a mile, 
Just to see, as she did daily. 

What more eggs were with the two. 

Pushing through the elm-tree copse. 
Winding up the stream, light-hearted, 

Where the osier pathway leads. 

Past the boughs she stoops — and stops. 
Lo, the wild swan had deserted, 

And a rat had gnawed the reeds! 

EUie went home sad and slow. 
If she found the lover ever. 

With his red-roan steed of steeds. 

Sooth I know not; but I know 
She could never show him — never. 

That swan's nest among the reeds! 



THE LOST BOWER. 

In the pleasant orchard-closes, 
"God bless all our gains." say we; 
But "May God bless all our losses,'' 
Better suits with our degree. 
Listen, gentle — ay, and simple! listen, children on the 
knee! 



THE LOST BOWER. 1 7 

Green the land is where my daily- 
Steps in jocund childhood played, 
Dimpled close with hill and valley, 
Dappled very close with shade; 
Summer-snow of apple-blossoms running up from glade 
to glade. 

There is one hill I see nearer. 
In my vision of the rest; 
And a little wood seems clearer 
As it climbeth from the west, 
Sideway from the tree-locked valley, to the airy upland 
crest. 

Small the wood is, green with hazels, 

And, completing the ascent, 

Where the wind blows and sun dazzles 

Thrills in leafy tremblement. 
Like a heart that after climbing beateth quickly through 
^ content. 

Not a step the wood advances 
O'er the open hill-tops bound; 
There, in green arrest, the branches 
See their image on the ground: 
You may walk beneath them smiling, glad with sight 
and glad with sound. 

For you harken on your right hand, 
How the birds do leap and call 
In the greenwood, out of sight and 
Out of reach and fear of all; 
And the squirrels crack the filberts through their cheer- 
ful madrigal. 

Elizabeth Browning, Z 



l8 THE LOST BOWER. 

On your left, the sheep are cropping 
The slant grass and daisies pale, 
And five apple-trees stand dropping 
Separate shadows towards the vale 
Over which, in choral silence, the hills look you their 
"All hail!" 

Far out, kindled by each other, 
Shining hills on hills arise, 
Close as brother leans to brother 
When they press beneath the eyes 
Of some father praying blessings from the gifts of 
paradise. 

While beyond, above them mounted, 
And above their woods also, 
Malvern hills, for mountains counted 
Not unduly, loom a-row — 
Keepers of Piers Plowman's visions through the sun- 
shine and the snow. 

Yet, in childhood, little prized I 
That fair walk and fair survey; 
'Twas a straight walk unadvised by 
The least mischief worth a nay; 
Up and down — as dull as grammar on the eve of 
holiday. 

But the wood, all close and clenching 
Bough in bough and root in root, — 
No more sky (for over-branching) 
At your head than at your foot, — 
Oh, the wood drew me within it by a glamour past 
dispute! 



THE LOST BOWER. 1 9 

Few and broken paths showed through it, 
Where the sheep had tried to run, — 
Forced with snowy wool to strew it 
Round the thickets, when anon 
They, with silly thorn-pricked noses, bleated back into 
the sun. 

But my childish heart beat stronger 
Than those thickets dared to grow: 
/ could piece them! / could longer 
Travel on, methought, than so: 
Sheep for sheep-paths! braver children climb and creep 
where they would go. 

And the poets wander, (said I,) 
Over places all as rude: 
Bold Rinaldo's lovely lady 
Sat to meet him in a wood: 
Rosalinda, like a fountain, laughed out pure with 
solitude. 

And if Chaucer had not travelled 
Through a forest by a well. 
He had never dreamt nor marvelled 
At those ladies fair and fell 
Who lived smiling without loving in their island- 
citadel. 

Thus I thought of the old singers 
And took courage from their song, 
Till my little struggling fingers 
Tore asunder gyve and thong 
Of the brambles which entrapped me, and the barrier 
branches strong. 



20 THE LOST BOWER. 

On a day, such pastime keeping, 
With a fawn's heart debonair, 
Under-crawling, overleaping 
Thorns that prick and boughs that bear, 
I stood suddenly astonied — I was gladdened un- 
aware. 

From the place I stood in, floated 
Back the covert dim and close, 
And the open ground was coated 
Carpet-smooth with grass and moss. 
And the blue-belFs purple presence signed it worthily 
across. 

Here a linden-tree stood, brightening 
All adown its silver rind; 
For as some trees draw the lightning, 
So this tree, unto my mind. 
Drew to earth the blessed sunshine from the sky where 
it was shrined. 

Tall the linden-tree, and near it 
An old hawthorn also grew; 
And wood-ivy like a spirit 
Hovered dimly round the two, 
Shaping thence that bower of beauty which I sing of 
thus to you. 

'Twas a bower for garden fitter 
Than for any woodland wide: 
Though a fresh and dewy glitter 
Struck it through from side to side, 
Shaped and shaven was the freshness, as by garden- 
cunning plied. 



THE LOST BOWER. 21 

Oh, a lady might have come there, 
Hooded fairly like her hawk, 
With a book or lute in summer, 
And a hope of sweeter talk, — 
Listening less to her own music than for footsteps on 
the walk! 

But that bower appeared a marvel 
In the wildness of the place; 
With such seeming art and travail, 
Finely fixed and fitted was 
Leaf to leaf, the dark-green ivy, to the summit from 
the base. 

And the ivy veined and glossy 
Was enwrought with eglantine; 
And the wild hop fibred closely. 
And the large-leaved columbine, 
Arch of door and window-mullion , did right sylvanly 
entwine. 

Rose-trees either side the door were 
Growing lithe and growing tall, 
Each one set, a summer warder 
For the keeping of the hall, — 
With a red rose and a white rose, leaning, nodding at 
the wall. 

As I entered, mosses hushing 
Stole all noises from my foot; 
And a green elastic cushion. 
Clasped within the linden's root. 
Took me in a chair of silence very rare and ab- 
solute. 



22 THE LOST BOWER. 

All the floor was paved with glory, 
Greenly, silently inlaid 
(Through quick motions made before me) 
With fair counterparts in shade 
Of the fair serrated ivy-leaves which slanted over- 
head. 

"Is such pavement in a palace?" 
So I questioned in my thought: 
The sun, shining through the chalice 
Of the red rose hung without. 
Threw within a red libation, like an answer to my 
doubt. 

At the same time, on the linen 
Of my childish lap there fell 
Two white may-leaves, downward winning 
Through the ceiling's miracle. 
From a blossom, like an angel, out of sight yet blessing 
well. 

Down to floor and up to ceiling 
Quick I turned my childish face, 
With an innocent appealing 
For the secret of the place 
To the trees, which surely knew it in partaking of the 
grace. 

Where's no foot of human creature 
How could reach a human hand? 
And if this be work of nature. 
Why has nature turned so bland. 
Breaking ofl* from other wild- work? It was hard to 
understand. 



THE LOST BOWER. 2^ 

Was she weary of rough-doing, 
Of the bramble and the thorn ] 
Did she pause in tender rueing 
Here of all her sylvan scorn'? 
Or in mock of art's deceiving was the sudden mildness 
worn? 

Or could this same bower (I fancied) 
Be the work of Dryad strong, 
Who, surviving all that chanced 
In the world's old pagan wrong. 
Lay hid, feeding in the woodland on the last true 
poet's song'2 

Or was this the house of fairies, 
Left, because of the rough ways, 
Unassoiled by Ave Marys 
Which the passing pilgrim prays, 
And beyond St Catherine's chiming on the blessed 
Sabbath days] 

So, young muser, I sat listening 
To my fancy's wildest word: 
On a sudden, through the glistening 
Leaves around, a little stirred, 
Came a sound, a sense of music which was rather felt 
than heard. 

Softly, finely, it enwound me; 
From the world it shut me in, — 
Like a fountain falling round me. 
Which with silver waters thin 
Clips a little water Naiad sitting smilingly within. 



24 THE LOST BOWER. 

Whence the music came, who knoweth? 
/ know nothing: but indeed 
Pan or Faunus never bloweth 
So much sweetness from a reed 
Which has sucked the milk of waters at the oldest 
river-head. 

Never lark the sun can waken 
With such sweetness! when the lark, 
The high planets overtaking 
In the half-evanished Dark, 
Casts his singing to their singing, like an arrow to the 
mark. 

Never nightingale so singeth: 
Oh, she leans on thorny tree 
And her poet-song she flingeth 
Over pain to victory! 
Yet she never sings such music, — or she sings it not 
to me. 

Never blackbirds, never thrushes 
Nor small finches sing so sweet. 
When the sun strikes through the bushes 
To their crimson clinging feet. 
And their pretty eyes look sideways to the summer 
heavens complete. 

If it were a bird, it seemed 
Most like Chaucer's, which, in sooth, 
He of green and azure dreamed, 
While it sat in spirit-ruth 
On that bier of a crowned lady, singing nigh her 
silent mouth. 



THE LOST BOWER. 2^ 

If it were a bird? — ah, sceptic, 
Give me "yea" or give me "nay" — 
Though my soul were nympholeptic 
As I heard that virelay. 
You may stoop your pride to pardon, for my sin is 
far away! 

I rose up in exaltation 
And an inward trembling heat. 
And (it seemed) in geste of passion 
Dropped the music to my feet 
Like a garment rustling downwards — such a silence 
followed it! 

Heart and head beat through the quiet 
Full and heavily, though slower: 
In the song, I think, and by it, 
Mystic Presences of power 
Had up-snatched me to the Timeless, then returned 
me to the Hour. 

In a child-abstraction lifted, 
Straightway from the bower I past, 
Foot and soul being dimly drifted 
Through the greenwood, till, at last. 
In the hill-top's open sunshine I all consciously was 
cast. 

Face to face with the true mountains 
I stood silently and still, 
Drawing strength from fancy's dauntings. 
From the air about the hill 
And from Nature's open mercies and most debonair 
goodwill. 



26 THE LOST BOWER. 

Oh, the golden-hearted daisies 
Witnessed there, before my youth, 
To the truth of things, with praises 
Of the beauty of the truth; 
And I woke to Nature's real, laughing joyfully for 
both. 

And I said within me, laughing, 
"I have found a bower to-day, 
A green lusus, fashioned half in 
Chance and half in Nature's play; 
And a little bird sings nigh it, I will nevermore 
missay. 

"Henceforth, / will be the fairy 
Of this bower not built by one; 
I will go there, sad or merry. 
With each morning's benison. 
And the bird shall be my harper in the dream-hall I 
have won." 

So I said. But the next morning, 
( — ^Child, look up into my face — 
'Ware, oh sceptic, of your scorning! 
This is truth in its pure grace!) 
The next morning all had vanished, or my wandering 
missed the place. 

Bring an oath most sylvan-holy. 
And upon it swear me true — 
By the wind-bells swinging slowly 
Their mute curfews in the dew, 
By the advent of the snow-drop, by the rosemary and 
rue, — 



THE LOST BOWER. 2^ 

I affirm by all or any, 
Let the cause be charm or chance, 
That my wandering searches many 
Missed the bower of my romance — 
That I nevermore upon it turned my mortal coun- 
tenance. 

I affirm that, since I lost it. 
Never bower has seemed so fair; 
Never garden-creeper crossed it 
With so deft and brave an air. 
Never bird sung in the summer, as I saw and heard 
them there. 

Day by day, with new desire. 
Toward my wood I ran in faith. 
Under leaf and over brier. 
Through the thickets, out of breath; 
Like the prince who rescued Beauty from the sleep as 
long as death. 

But his sword of mettle clashed. 
And his arm smote strong, I ween, 
And her dreaming spirit flashed 
Through her body's fair white screen. 
And the light thereof might guide him up the cedar 
alleys green: 

But for me I saw no splendour — 
All my sword was my child-heart; 
And the wood refused surrender 
Of that bower it held apart, 
Safe as CEdipus's grave-place 'mid Colonels olives 
swart. 



28 THE LOST BOWER. 

As Aladdin sought the basements 
His fair palace rose upon, 
And the four-and-twenty casements 
Which gave answers to the sun; 
So, in wilderment of gazing, I looked up and I looked 
down. 

Years have vanished since, as wholly 
As the little bower did then; 
And you call it tender folly 
That such thoughts should come again? 
Ah, I cannot change this sighing for your smiling, 
brother men! 

For this loss it did prefigure 
Other loss of better good, 
When my soul, in spirit vigour 
And in ripened womanhood. 
Fell from visions of more beauty than an arbour in a 
wood. 

I have lost — oh, many a pleasure. 
Many a hope and many a power — 
Studious health and merry leisure. 
The first dew on the first flower! 
But the first of all my losses was the losing of the 
bower. 

I have lost the dream of Doing, 
And the other dream of Done, 
The first spring in the pursuing, 
The first pride in the Begun, — 
First recoil from incompletion, in the face of what is 
won — 



THE LOST BOWER. 2g 

Exaltations in the far light 
Where some cottage only is; 
Mild dejections in the starlight, 
Which the sadder-hearted miss; 
And the child-cheek blushing scarlet for the very shame 
of bliss. 

I have lost the sound child-sleeping 
Which the thunder could not break; 
Something too of the strong leaping 
Of the staglike heart awake, 
Which the pale is low for keeping in the road it ought 
to take. 

Some respect to social fictions 
Has been also lost by me; 
And some generous genuflexions. 
Which my spirit offered free 
To the pleasant old conventions of our false humanity. 

All my losses did I tell you, 
Ye perchance would look away, — 
Ye would answer me, "Farewell! you 
Make sad company to-day. 
And your tears are falling faster than the bitter words 
you say." 

For God placed me like a dial 
In the open ground with power, 
And my heart had for its trial 
All the sun and all the shower: 
And I suffered many losses, — and my first was of the 
bower. 



30 THE LOST BOWER. 

Laugh you'? If that loss of mine be 
Of no heavy-seeming weight — 
When the cone falls from the pine-tree, 
The young children laugh thereat; 
Yet the wind that struck it, riseth, and the tempest 
shall be great. 

One who knew me in my childhood 
In the glamour and the game, 
Looking on me long and mild, would 
Nev^er know me for the same. 
Come, unchanging recollections, where those changes 
overcame ! 

By this couch I weakly lie on. 
While I count my memories, — 
Through the fingers which, still sighing, 
I press closely on mine eyes, — 
Clear as once beneath the sunshine, I behold the 
bower arise. 

Springs the linden-tree as greenly. 
Stroked with light adown its rind; 
And the ivy-leaves serenely 
Each in either intertwined; 
And the rose-trees at the doorway, they have neither 
grown nor pined. 

From those overblown faint roses 
Not a leaf appeareth shed, 
And that little bud discloses 
Not a thorn's-breadth more of red 
For the winters and the summers which have passed 
me overhead. 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 3! 

And that music overfloweth, 
Sudden sweet, the sylvan eaves: 
Thrush or nightingale — who knowethi 
Fay or Faunus — who believes*? 
But my heart still trembles in me to the trembling of 
the leaves. 

Is the bower lost, then? who sayeth 
That the bower indeed is lost? 
Hark! my spirit in it prayeth 
Through the solstice and the frost, — 
And the prayer preserves it greenly, to the last and 
uttermost. 

Till another open for me 
In God's Eden-land unknown. 
With an angel at the doorway, 
White with gazing at His throne; 
And a saint's voice in the palm-trees, singing — "All is 
lost . . . and won!" 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 

A Knight of gallant deeds 
And a young page at his side. 

From the holy war in Palestine 
Did slow and thoughtful ride, 

As each were a palmer and told for beads 
The dews of the eventide. 



32 THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 

"O young page," said the knight, 

"A noble page art thou! 
Thou fearest not to steep in blood 

The curls upon thy brow; 
And once in the tent, and twice in the fight, 

Didst ward me a mortal blow." 

"O brave knight," said the page, 

"Or ere we hither came. 
We talked in tent, we talked in field, 

Of the bloody battle-game; 
But here, below this greenwood bough, 

I cannot speak the same. 

"Our troop is far behind. 

The woodland calm is new; 
Our steeds, with slow grass-muffled hoofs, 

Tread deep the shadows through; 
And in my mind, some blessing kind 

Is dropping with the dew, 

"The woodland calm is pure — 

I cannot choose but have 
A thought from these, o' the beechen-trees 

Which in our England wave. 
And of the little finches fine 
Which sang there while in Palestine 

The warrior hilt we drave. 

"Methinks, a moment gone, 

I heard my mother pray! 
I heard, sir knight, the prayer for me 

Wherein she passed away; 
And I know the heavens are leaning down 

To hear what I shall say.'' 



THE ROMAUNt OF THE PAGE. 33 

The page spake calm and high, 

As of no mean degree; 
Perhaps he felt in nature's broad 

Full heart, his own was free: 
And the knight looked up to his lifted eye, 

Then answered smilingly — 

"Sir page, I pray your grace! 

Certes, I meant not so 
To cross your pastoral mood, sir page, 

With the crook of the battle-bow; 
But a knight may speak of a lad3^s face, 
I ween, in any mood or place. 

If the grasses die or grow. 

"And this I meant to say — 

My lady's face shall shine 
As ladies' faces use to greet, 

My page from Palestine; 
Or, speak she fair or prank she gay, 

She is no lady of mine. 

"And this I meant to fear — 

Her bower may suit thee ill; 
For, sooth, in that same field and tent. 

Thy talk was somewhat still: 
And fitter thy hand for my knightly spear 

Than thy tongue for my lady's will!" 

Slowly and thankfully 

The young page bowed his head; 
His large eyes seemed to muse a smile, 

Until he blushed instead. 
And no lady in her bower, pardi^, 

Could blush more sudden red: 

EHzahth Brownings 3 



34 THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 

"Sir Knight, — thy lady's bower to me 
Is suited well " he said. 

Beati^ heati mortui! 

From the convent on the sea, 

One mile off, or scarce so nigh, 

Swells the dirge as clear and high 

As if that, over brake and lea, 

Bodily the wind did carry 

The great altar of St. Mary, 

And the fifty tapers burning o'er it. 

And the lady Abbess dead before it. 

And the chanting nuns whom yesterweek 

Her voice did charge and bless, — 

Chanting steady, chanting meek, 

Chanting with a solemn breath 

Because that they are thinking less 

Upon the dead than upon death. 

Beati, heati mortui! 
Now the vision in the sound 
Wheeleth on the wind around; 
Now it sweepeth back, away — 
The uplands will not let it stay 
To dark the western sun: 
Mortui! — away at last, — 
Or ere the page's blush is past: 
And the knight heard all, and the page heard none. 

"A boon, thou noble knight, 

If ever I served thee! 
Though thou art a knight and I am a page, 

Now grant a boon to me; 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 35 

And tell me sooth, if dark or bright, 
If little loved or loved aright 
Be the face of thy ladye." 

Gloomily looked the knight — 

"As a son thou hast served me, 
And would to none I had granted boon 

Except to only thee! 
For haply then I should love aright, 
For then I should know if dark or bright 

Were the face of my ladye. 

"Yet it ill suits my knightly tongue 

To grudge that granted boon. 
That heavy price from heart and life 

I paid in silence down; 
The hand that claimed it, cleared in fine 
My father's fame: I swear by mine, 

That price was nobly won! 

"Earl Walter was a brave old earl, 

He was my father's friend; 
And while I rode the lists at court 

And little guessed the end. 
My noble father in his shroud 
Against a slanderer lying loud 

He rose up to defend. 

"Oh, calm below the marble grey 

My father's dust was strown! 
Oh, meek above the marble grey 

His image prayed alone! 

3* 



36 THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 

The slanderer lied: the wretch was brave— 
For, looking up the minster-nave, 
He saw my father's knightly glaive 
Was changed from steel to stone. 

"Earl Walter's glaive was steel, 

With a brave old hand to wear it, 
And dashed the lie back in the mouth 
Which lied against the godly truth 
And against the knightly merit: 
The slanderer, 'neath the avenger's heel. 
Struck up the dagger in appeal 
From stealthy lie to brutal force — 
And out upon the traitor's corse 
Was yielded the true spirit. 

"I would mine hand had fought that fight 

And justified my father! 
I would mine heart had caught that wound 

And slept beside him rather! 
I think it were a better thing 
Than murdered friend and marriage-ring 

Forced on my life together. 

"Wail shook Earl Walter's house; 

His true wife shed no tear; 
She lay upon her bed as mute 

As the earl did on his bier: 
Till — ^Ride, ride fast,' she said at last, 

*And bring the avenged's son anear! 
Ride fast, ride free, as a dart can flee, 
For white of blee with waiting for me 

Is the corse in the next chamb^re.' 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 37 

"I came, I knelt beside her bed; 

Her calm was worse than strife: 
*My husband, for thy father dear, 
Gave freely when thou wast not here 

His own and eke my life. 
A boon! Of that sweet child we make 
An orphan for thy father's sake, 

Make thou, for ours, a wife/ 

"I said, 'My steed neighs in the court, 

My bark rocks on the brine, 
And the warrior's vow I am under now 

To free the pilgrim's shrine; 
But fetch the ring and fetch the priest 

And call that daughter of thine, 
And rule she wide from my castle on Nyde 
While I am in Palestine.' 

"In the dark chamb^re, if the bride was fair, 

Ye wis, I could not see. 
But the steed thrice neighed, and the priest fast prayed. 

And wedded fast were we. 
Her mother smiled upon her bed 
As at its side we knelt to wed, 

And the bride rose from her knee 
And kissed the smile of her mother dead, 

Or ever she kissed me. 

"My page, my page, what grieves thee so. 

That the tears run down thy face?" — 
"Alas, alas! mine own sister 

Was in thy lady's case: 
But she laid down the silks she wore 
And followed him she wed before, 



38 THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 

Disguised as his true servitor, 
To the very battle-place." 

And wept the page, but laughed the knight, 

A careless laugh laughed he: 
"Well done it were for thy sister, 

But not for my ladye! 
My love, so please you, shall requite 
No woman, whether dark or bright, 

Unwomaned if she be." 

The page stopped weeping and smiled cold- 

"Your wisdom may declare 
That womanhood is proved the best 
By golden brooch and glossy vest 

The mincing ladies wear; 
Yet is it proved, and was of old, 
Anear as well, I dare to hold. 

By truth, or by despair." 

He smiled no more, he wept no more, 

But passionate he spake — 
"Oh, womanly she prayed in tent, 

When none beside did wake! 
Oh, womanly she paled in fight. 

For one beloved's sake! — 
And her little hand, defiled with blood, 
Her tender tears of womanhood 

Most woman-pure did make!" 

— "Well done it were for thy sister, 

Thou tellest well her tale! 
But for my lady, she shall pray 

r the kirk of Nydesdale. 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 39 

Not dread for me but love for me 

Shall make my lady pale; 
No casque shall hide her woman's tear; 
It shall have room to trickle clear 

Behind her woman's veil." 

— "But what if she mistook thy mind 

And followed thee to strife, 
Then kneeling did entreat thy love 

As paynims ask for life?" 
— "I would forgive, and evermore 
Would love her as my servitor. 

But little as my wife. 

"Look up — there is a small bright cloud 

Alone amid the skies! 
So high, so pure, and so apart, 

A woman's honour lies." 
The page looked up — the cloud was sheen — 
A sadder cloud did rush, I ween. 

Betwixt it and his eyes. 

Then dimly dropped his eyes away 

From welkin unto hill — 
Ha! who rides there *? — the page is 'ware. 

Though the cry at his heart is still: 
And the page seeth all and the knight seeth none, 
Though banner and spear do fleck the sun. 

And the Saracens ride at will. 

He speaketh calm, he speaketh low, — 

"Ride fast, my master, ride, 
Or ere within the broadening dark 

The narrow shadows hide." 



40 THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 

^^Yea, fast, my page, I will do so, 
And keep thou at my side." 

"Now nay, now nay, ride on thy way, 

Thy faithful page precede, 
For I must loose on saddle-bow 
My battle-casque that galls, I trow. 

The shoulder of my steed; 
And I must pray, as I did vow, 

For one in bitter need. 

"Ere night I shall be near to thee, — 

Now ride, my master, ride! 
Ere night, as parted spirits cleave 
To mortals too beloved to leave, 

I shall be at thy side." 
The knight smiled free at the fantasy. 

And adown the dell did ride. 

Had the knight looked up to the page's face. 

No smile the word had won; 
Had the knight looked up to the page's face, 

I ween he had never gone: 
Had the knight looked back to the page's geste, 

I ween he had turned anon. 
For dread was the woe in the face so young. 
And wild was the silent geste that flung 
Casque, sword to earth, as the boy down-sprung 

And stood — alone, alone. 

He clenched his hands as if to hold 

His soul's great agony — 
"Have I renounced my womanhood 

For wifehood unto theey 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 4I 

And is this the last, last look of thine 
That ever I shall see] 

"Yet God thee save, and may'st thou have 

A lady to thy mind, 
More woman-proud and half as true 

As one thou leav'st behind! 
And God me take with Him to dwell — 
For Him I cannot love too well, 

As I have loved my kind/' 

She looketh up, in earth's despair 

The hopeful heavens to seek; 
That little cloud still floateth there. 

Whereof her loved did speak: 
How bright the little cloud appears! 
Her eyelids fall upon the tears. 

And the tears down either cheek. 

The tramp of hoof, the flash of steel — 
The Paynims round her coming! 

The sound and sight have made her calm, — 
False page, but truthful woman; 

She stands amid them all unmoved: 

A heart once broken by the loved 
Is strong to meet the foeman. 

"Ho, Christian page! art keeping sheep, 
From pouring wine-cups resting?" — 

"I keep my master's noble name, 
For warring not for feasting! 

And if that here Sir Hubert were, 

My master brave, my master dear. 
Ye would not stay the questing." 



42 THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE. 

"Where is thy master, scornful page, 
That we may slay or bind him?" — 

"Now search the lea and search the wood, 
And see if ye can find him! 

Nathless, as hath been often tried, 

Your Paynim heroes faster ride 
Before him than behind him." 

"Give smoother answers, lying page, 

Or perish in the lying!" — 
"I trow that if the warrior brand 
Beside my foot, were in my hand, 

'Twere better at replying!" 
They cursed her deep, they smote her low, 
They cleft her golden ringlets through; 

The Loving is the Dying. 

She felt the scimitar gleam down, 

And met it from beneath 
With smile more bright in victory 

Than any sword from sheath, — 
Which flashed across her lips serene. 
Most like the spirit-light between 

The darks of life and death. 

Ingemisco, ingemisco! 
From the convent on the sea, 
Now it sweepeth solemnly, 
As over wood and over lea 
Bodily the wind did carry 
The great altar of St. Mary, 
And the fifty tapers paling o^er it. 
And the Lady Abbess stark before it, 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 43 

And the weary nuns with hearts that faintly 
Beat along their voices saintly — 

Ingemisco, ingemisco! 
Dirge for abbess laid in shroud 
Sweepeth o'er the shroudless Dead, 
Page or lady, as we said. 
With the dews upon her head, 
All as sad if not as loud. 

Ingemisco, ingemisco! 
Is ever a lament begun 
By any mourner under sun, 
Which, ere it endeth, suits but one? 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

To the belfry, one by one, went the ringers from the sun. 

Toll slowly. 
And the oldest ringer said, " Ours is music for the Dead 
When the rebecks are all done." 

Six abeles i' the churchyard grow on the north side in 
a row, 

Toll slowly. 
And the shadows of their tops rock across the little slopes 
Of the grassy graves below. 

On the south side and the west a small river runs in 
haste, 

Toll slowly. 
And, between the river flowing and the fair green 
trees a-growing, 

Do the dead lie at their rest. 



44 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

On the east I sat that day, up against a willow grey: 

Toll slowly. 
Through the rain of willow branches I could see the 
low hill-ranges 

And the river on its way. 

There I sat beneath the tree, and the bell tolled 
solemnly. 

Toll slowly. 
While the trees' and river's voices flowed between the 
solemn noises, — 

Yet death seemed more loud to me. 

There I read this ancient Rhyme while the bell did 
all the time 

Toll slowly. 
And the solemn knell fell in with the tale of life and sin, 
Like a rhythmic fate sublime. 



THE RHYME. 

Broad the forests stood (I read) on the hills of Linteged, 

Toll slowly. 
And three hundred years had stood mute adown each 
hoary wood, 

Like a full heart having prayed. 

And the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang 
west, 

Toll slowly. 
And but little thought was theirs of the silent antique 
years, 

In the building of their nest. 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 45 

Down the sun dropt large and red on the towers of 
Linteged, — 

Toll slowly. 
Lance and spear upon the height, bristhng strange in 
fiery light, 

While the castle stood in shade. 

There the castle stood up black with the red sun at 
its back, 

Toll slowly. 
Like a sullen smouldering pyre with a top that flickers 
fire 

When the wind is on its track. 

And five hundred archers tall did besiege the castle 
wall, 

Toll slowly. 
And the castle, seethed in blood, fourteen days and 
nights had stood 

And to-night was near its fall. 

Yet thereunto, blind to doom, three months since, a 
bride did come, 

Toll slowly. 
One who proudly trod the floors and softly whispered 
in the doors, 

"May good angels bless our home." 

Oh, a bride of queenly eyes, with a front of constancies. 

Toll slowly. 
Oh, a bride of cordial mouth where the untired smile 
of youth 

Did light outward its own sighs! 



46 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

'Twas a Duke's fair orphan-girl, and her uncle's ward 
— the Earl, 

Toll slowly. 
Who betrothed her twelve years old, for the sake of 
dowry gold. 

To his son Lord Leigh the churl. 

But what time she had made good all her years of 
womanhood, 

Toll slowly. 
Unto both these Lords of Leigh spake she out right 
sovranly, 

"My will runneth as my blood. 

"And while this same blood makes red this same right 

hand's veins," she said, 

Toll slowly, 

"'Tis my will as lady free, not to wed a Lord of Leigh^ 

But Sir Guy of Linteged." 

The old Earl he smiled smooth, then he sighed for 
wilful youth, — 

Toll slowly. 
"Good my niece, that hand withal looketh somewhat 
soft and small 

For so large a will, in sooth" 

She too smiled by that same sign, but her smile was 
cold and fine, — 

Toll slowly. 
^'Little hand clasps muckle gold, or it were not worth 
the hold 

Of thy son, good uncle mine!" 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 47 

Then the young lord jerked his breath, and sware 
thickly in his teeth, 

Toll slowly, 
"He would wed his own betrothed, an she loved him 
an she loathed, 

Let the life come or the death." 

Up she rose with scornful eyes, as her father's child 
might rise, — 

Toll slowly. 
"Thy hound's blood, my Lord of Leigh, stains thy 
knightly heel," quoth she, 

"And he moans not where he lies: 

"But a woman's will dies hard, in the hall or on the 
sward" — 

Toll slowly. 
"By that grave, my lords, which made me orphaned 
girl and dowered lady, 

I deny you wife and ward!" 

Unto each she bowed her head and swept past with 
lofty tread. 

Toll slowly. 
Ere the midnight-bell had ceased, in the chapel had 
the priest 

Blessed her, bride of Linteged. 

Fast and fain the bridal train along the night-storm 
rode amain: 

Toll slowly. 
Hard the steeds of lord and serf struck their hoofs 
out on the turf, 

In the pauses of the rain. 



48 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

Fast and fain the kinsmen's train along the storm 
pursued amain, 

Toll slowly. 
Steed on steed-track, dashing off, — thickening, doub- 
ling hoof on hoof. 

In the pauses of the rain. 

And the bridegroom led the flight on his red-roan 
steed of might, 

Toll slowly. 
And the bride lay on his arm, still, as if she feared 
no harm. 

Smiling out into the night. 

"Dost thou fear?" he said at last: "Nay," she answered 
him in haste, — 

Toll slowly, 
"Not such death as we could find — only life with one 
behind. 

Ride on fast as fear, ride fasti" 

Up the mountain wheeled the steed — girth to ground, 
and fetlocks spread, — 
Toll slowly. 
Headlong bounds , and rocking flanks, — down he stag- 
gered, down the banks, 

To the towers of Linteged. 

High and low the serfs looked out, red the flambeaus 
tossed about, 

Toll slowly. 
In the courtyard rose the cry, "Live the Duchess and 
Sir Guy!" 

But she never heard them shout. 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 49 

On the steed she dropped her cheek, kissed his mane 
and kissed his neck, — 
Toll slowly. 
"I had happier died by thee than lived on, a Lady- 
Leigh," 

Were the first words she did speak. 

But a three months' joyaunce lay 'twixt that moment 
and to-day. 

Toll slowly. 
When five hundred archers tall stand beside the castle 
wall 

To recapture Duchess May. 

And the castle standeth black with the red sun at its 
back, 

Toll slowly. 
And a fortnight's siege is done, and, except the duchess, 
none 

Can misdoubt the coming wrack. 

Then the captain, young Lord Leigh, with his eyes so 
grey of blee. 

Toll slowly. 
And thin lips that scarcely sheath the cold white 
gnashing of his teeth, 

Gnashed in smiling, absently, 

Cried aloud, "So goes the day, bridegroom fair of 
Duchess May!'' 

Toll slowly. 
"Look thy last upon that sun! if thou seest to-mor- 
row's one 

'Twill be through a foot of clay. 

Elizabeth Browning. 4 



50 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

"Ha, fair bride! dost hear no sound save that moan- 
ing of the hound?" 

Toll slowly. 
"Thou and I have parted troth, yet I keep my venge- 
ance-oath, 

And the other may come round. 

"Ha! thy will is brave to dare, and thy new love past 
compare," — 

Toll slowly. 
"Yet thine old love's faulchion brave is as strong a 
thing to have. 

As the will of lady fair. 

"Peck on blindly, netted dove! If a wife's name thee 
behove," 

Toll slowly. 
"Thou shalt wear the same to-morrow, ere the grave 
has hid the sorrow 

Of thy last ill-mated love. 

"O'er his fixed and silent mouth, thou and I will call 
back troth;" 

Toll slowly. 
"He shall altar be and priest, — and he will not cry at 
least 

^I forbid you, I am lothl' 

"I will wring thy fingers pale in the gauntlet of my 
mail," 

Toll slowly. 
"'Little hand and muckle gold' close shall lie within 
my hold, 

As the sword did, to prevail." 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 5 I 

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang 
west. 

Toll slowly. 
Oh, and laughed the Duchess May, and her soul did 
put away 

All his boasting, for a jest. 

In her chamber did she sit, laughing low to think of 
it,— 

Toll slowly, 
"Tower is strong and will is free: thou canst boast, 
my lord of Leigh, 

But thou boastest little wit. 

In her tire-glass gazed she, and she blushed right 
womanly: 

Toll slowly. 
She blushed half from her disdain, half, her beauty 
was so plain, 

— "Oath for oath, my lord of Leigh! 

Straight she called her maidens in — "Since ye gave 
me blame herein," 

Toll slowly, 
"That a bridal such as mine should lack gauds to 
make it fine, 

Come and shrive me from that sin. 

"It is three months gone to-day since I gave mine 
hand away:" 

Toll slowly, 
"Bring the gold and bring the gem, we will keep 
bride-state in them, 

While we keep the foe at bay. 

4* 



52 RHYxME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

"On your arms I loose mine hair; comb it smooth and 
crown it fair:" 

Toll slowly, 
"I would look in purple pall from this lattice down 
the wall, 

And throw scorn to one that's there!" 

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang 
west: 

Toll slowly. 
On the tower the castle's lord leant in silence on his 
sword, 

With an anguish in his breast 

With a spirit-laden weight did he lean down passionate: 

Toll slowly. 
They have almost sapped the wall, — they will enter 
therewithal 

With no knocking at the gate. 

Then the sword he leant upon, shivered, snapped upon 
the stone, — 

Toll slowly, 
"Sword," he thought, with inward laugh, "ill thou 
servest for a staff 

When thy nobler use is done! 

"Sword, thy nobler use is done! tower is lost, and 
shame begun!" — 

Toll slowly, 
"If we met them in the breach, hilt to hilt or speech 
to speech. 

We should die there, each for one. 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 53 

"If we met them at the wall, we should singly, vainly 
fall/' 

Toll slowly. 
But if / die here alone, — then I die who am but 
one, 

And die nobly for them all. 

"Five true friends lie for my sake in the moat, and in 
the brake'' 

Toll slowly, 
"Thirteen warriors lie at rest with a black wound in 
the breast, 

And not one of these will wake. 

"So no more of this shall be! heart-blood weighs too 
heavily," — 

Toll slowly, 
"And I could not sleep in grave, with the faithful and 
the brave 

Heaped around and over me. 

"Since young Clare a mother hath, and young Ralph 
a plighted faith," 

Toll slowly, 
"Since my pale young sister's cheeks blush like rose 
when Ronald speaks. 

Albeit never a word she saith — 

"These shall never die for me: life-blood falls too 
heavily:" 

Toll slowly, 
"And if/ die here apart, o'er my dead and silent heart 
They shall pass out safe and free. 



54 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

"When the foe hath heard it said — 'Death holds Guy 
of Linteged,' " 

Toll slowly, 
"That new corse new peace shall bring, and a blessed, 
blessed thing 

Shall the stone be at its head. 

"Then my friends shall pass out free, and shall bear 
my memory," 

Toll slowly, 
"Then my foes shall sleek their pride, soothing fair 
my widowed bride 

Whose sole sin was love of me: 

"With their words all smooth and sweet, they will 
front her and entreat,'' 
Toll slowly, 
"And their purple pall will spread underneath her 
fainting head 

While her tears drop over it. 

"She will weep her woman's tears, she will pray her 
woman's prayers," 

Toll slowly, 
"But her heart is young in pain, and her hopes will 
spring again 

By the suntime of her years. 

"Ah, sweet May! ah, sweetest grief! — once I vowed 
thee my belief," 

Toll slowly, 
"That thy name expressed thy sweetness, — May of 
poets, in completeness! 

Now my May-day seemeth brief." 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 55 

All these silent thoughts did swim o'er his eyes grown 
strange and dim, 

Toll slowly. 
Till his true men in the place, wished they stood there 
face to face 

With the foe instead of him. 

"One last oath, my friends that wear faithful hearts to 
do and dare!" 
/ Toll slowly. 

"Tower must fall and bride be lost — swear me service 
worth the cost!" 

Bold they stood around to swear. 

"Each man clasp my hand and swear by the deed we 
failed in there," 

Toll slowly, 
"Not for vengeance, not for rght, will ye strike one 
blow to-night!" 

Pale they stood around to swear. 

"One last boon, young Ralph and Clare! faithful hearts 
to do and dare!" 

Toll slowly, 
"Bring that steed up from his stall, which she kissed 
before you all, 

Guide him up the turret-stair. 

" Ye shall harness him aright, and lead upward to this 
height;" 

Toll slowly, 
"Once in love and twice in war, hath he borne me 
strong and far: 

He shall bear me far to-night." 



56 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

Then his men looked to and fro, when they heard 
him speaking so; 

Toll slowly, 
"'Las! the noble heart/' they thought, "he in sooth is 
grief-distraught: 

Would we stood here with the foe!" 

But a fire flashed from his eye, 'twixt their thought 
and their reply, — 

Toll slowly, 
"Have ye so much time to waste? We who ride, 
here, must ride fast 

As we wish our foes to fly." 

They have fetched the steed with care, in the harness 
he did wear. 

Toll slowly. 
Past the court and through the door, across the rushes 
of the floors. 

But they goad him up the stair. 

Then from out her bower chamb^re, did the Duchess 
May repair: 

Toll slowly. 
"Tell me now what is your need," said the lady, "of 
this steed. 

That ye goad him up the stair?" 

Calm she stood; unbodkined through, fell her dark 
hair to her shoe; 

Toll slowly. 
And the smile upon her face, ere she left the tiring- 
glass. 

Had not time enough to go. 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 57 

"Get thee back, sweet Duchess May! hope is gone like 
yesterday." 

Toll slowly, 
"One half-hour completes the breach: and thy lord 
grows wild of speech — 

Get thee in, sweet lady, and pray! 

"In the east tower, highest of all, loud he cries for 
steed from stall:" 

Toll slowly. 
"He would ride as far," quoth he, "as for love and 
victory. 

Though he rides the castle-wall." 

"And we fetch the steed from stall, up where never a 
hoof did fall"— 

Toll slowly, 
"Wifely prayer meets deathly need: may the sweet 
Heavens hear thee plead 

If he rides the castle-wall!" 

Low she dropt her head, and lower, till her hair coiled 
on the floor, 

Toll slowly. 
And tear after tear you heard fall distinct as any 
word 

Which you might be listening for. 

"Get thee in, thou soft ladye! here is never a place 
for thee!" 

Toll slowly, 
"Braid thine hair and clasp thy gown, that thy beauty 
in its moan 

May find grace with Leigh of Leigh." 



58 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY 

She stood up in bitter case, with a pale yet steady 
face, 

Toll slowly. 
Like a statue thunderstruck, which, though quivering, 
seems to look 

Right against the thunder-place. 

And her foot trod in, with pride, her own tears i' the 
stone beside, — 

Toll slowly. 
"Go to, faithful friends, go to! judge no more what 
ladies do. 

No, nor how their lords may ride!'' 

Then the good steed's rein she took, and his neck did 
kiss and stroke: 

Toll slowly. 
Soft he neighed to answer her, and then followed up 
the stair 

For the love of her sweet look: 

Oh, and steeply, steeply wound up the narrow stair 
around. 

Toll slowly. 
Oh, and closely, closely speeding, step by step beside 
her treading 

Did he follow, meek as hound. 

On the east tower, high'st of all, — there, where never a 
hoof did fall, — 

Toll slowly. 
Out they swept, a vision steady, noble steed and lovely 
lady. 

Calm as if in bower or stall. 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 59 

Down she knelt at her lord's knee, and she looked up 
silently, 

Toll slowly. 
And he kissed her twice and thrice, for that look 
within her eyes 

Which he could not bear to see. 

Quoth he, "Get thee from this strife, and the sweet 
saints bless thy life!" 
Toll slowly, 
"In this hour I stand in need of my noble red-roan 
steed, 

But no more of my noble wife." 

Quoth she, "Meekly have I done all thy biddings 
under sun;" 

Toll slowly. 
"But by all my womanhood, which is proved so, true 
and good, 

I will never do this one. 

"Now by womanhood's degree and by wifehood's 
verity." 

Toll slowly, 
"In this hour if thou hast need of thy noble red-roan 
steed. 

Thou hast also need of me. 

By this golden ring ye see on this lifted hand pardi^." 

Toll slowly, 
"If this hour, on castle- wall can be room for steed 
from stall, 

Shall be also room for me. 



6o RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

"So the sweet saints with me be," (did she utter solemnly,) 

Toll slowly. 
"If a man, this eventide, on this castle wall will ride, 
He shall ride the same with mer 

Oh, he sprang up in the selle and he laughed out bitter- 
well, — 

Toll slowly, 
"Wouldst thou ride among the leaves, as we used on 
other eves. 

To hear chime a vesper-bell?" 

She clung closer to his knee — "Ay, beneath the cypress 
tree!" 

Toll slowly. 
"Mock me not, for otherwhere than along the green- 
wood fair 

Have I ridden fast with thee. 

"Fast I rode with new-made vows from my angry kins- 
man's house:" 

Toll slowly. 
"What, and would you men should reck that I dared 
more for love's sake 

As a bride than as a spouse? 

"What, and would you it should fall, as a proverb, 
before all," 

Toll slowly. 
"That a bride may keep your side while through castle- 
gate you ride. 

Yet eschew the castle-wall?" 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 6 1 

Ho! the breach yawns into ruin and roars up against 
her suing, 

Toll slowly. 
With the inarticulate din and the dreadful falling in — 
Shrieks of doing and undoing. 

Twice he wrung her hands in twain, but the small 
hands closed again. 

Toll slowly. 
Back he reined the steed — back, back! but she trailed 
along his track 

With a frantic clasp and strain. 

Evermore the foemen pour through the crash of window 
and door, 

Toll slowly. 
And the shouts of Leigh and Leigh, and the shrieks 
of "kill!" and "flee!" 

Strike up clear amid the roar. 

Thrice he wrung her hands in twain, but they closed 
and clung again. 

Toll slowly. 
While she clung, as one, withstood, clasps a Christ 
upon the rood. 

In a spasm of deathly pain. 

She clung wild and she clung mute with her shuddering 
lips half-shut; 

Toll slowly. 
Her head fallen as half in swound, hair and knee swept 
on the ground, 

She clung wild to stirrup and foot. 



62 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

Back he reined his steed back-thrown on the slippery 
coping-stone; 

Toll slowly. 
Back the iron hoofs did grind on the battlement behind 
Whence a hundred feet went down: 

And his heel did press and goad on the quivering flank 
bestrode, — 

Toll slowly. 
"Friends and brothers, save my wife! Pardon, Sweet, 
in change for life, — 

But I ride alone to God." 

Straight as if the holy name had upbreathed her like 
a flame. 

Toll slowly. 
She upsprang, she rose upright, in his selle she sat in 
sight. 

By her love she overcame. 

And her head was on his breast where she smiled as 
one at rest, — 

Toll slowly. 
"Ring," she cried, "O vesper-bell in the beechwood's 
old chapelle — 

But the passing-bell rings best!" 

They have caught out at the rein which Sir Guy threw 
loose — in vain, 

Toll slowly. 
For the horse in stark despair, with his front hoofs poised 
in air. 

On the last verge rears amain. 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 63 

Now he hangs, he rocks between, and his nostrils 
curdle in, 

Toll slowly. 
Now he shivers head and hoof, and the flakes of foam 
fall off, 

And his face grows fierce and thin: 

And a look of human woe from his staring eyes did go, 

Toll slowly. 
And a sharp cry uttered he, in a foretold agony 
Of the headlong death below, — 

And, "Ring, ring, thou passing bell," still she cried, 
"i' the old chapelle!" 
Toll slowly. 
Then back-toppling, crashing back — a dead weight flung 
out to wrack. 

Horse and riders overfell. 



Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang 
west, 

Toll slowly. 
And I read this ancient Rhyme, in the churchyard, while 
the chime 

Slowly tolled for one at rest. 

The abeles moved in the sun, and the river smooth 
did run, 

Toll slowly. 
And the ancient Rhyme rang strange, with its passion 
and its change. 

Here, where all done lay undone. 



64 RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 

And beneath a willow tree I a little grave did see, 

Toll slowly. 
Where was graved, — Here, undefiled, lieth Maud, 
a three- year child, 

Eighteen hundred, forty-three. 

Then, O spirits, did I say, ye who rode so fast that 
day, 

Toll slowly. 
Did star-wheels and angel wings with their holy win- 
nowings 

Keep beside you all the way? 

Though in passion ye would dash with a blind and 
heavy crash. 

Toll slowly. 
Up against the thick-bossed shield of God's judgment 
in the field, — 

Though your heart and brain were rash, — 

Now, your will is all unwilled, now, your pulses are 
all stilled, 

Toll slowly. 
Now, ye lie as meek and mild (whereso laid) as Maud 
the child, 

Whose small grave was lately filled. 

Beating heart and burning brow, ye are very patient 
now, 

Toll slowly. 
And the children might be bold to pluck the kingcups 
from your mould 

Ere a month had let them grow. 



RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY. 65 

And you let the goldfinch sing in the alder near in 
spring, 

Toll slowly. 
Let her build her nest and sit all the three weeks out 
on it, 

Murmuring not at anything* 

In your patience ye are strong, cold and heat ye take 

not wrong, 

Toll slowly. 
When the trumpet of the angel blows eternity's evangel, 

Time will seem to you not long. 

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang 
west, 

Toll slowly » 
And I said in underbreath, — All our life is mixed with 
death, 

And who knoweth which is best? 

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang 
west, 

Toll slowly » 
And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around 
our incompleteness, — 

Round our restlessness. His rest 



Elizabeth Brcivnin^. 



66 BERTHA IN THE LANE. 



BERTHA IN THE LANE. 

Put the broidery- frame away, 
For my sewing is all done: 

The last thread is used to-day, 
And I need not join it on. 

Though the clock stands at the noon 

I am weary. I have sewn. 

Sweet, for thee, a wedding gown. 

Sister, help me to the bed. 

And stand near me, Dearest-sweet. 
Do not shrink nor be afraid. 

Blushing with a sudden heat! 
No one staudeth in the street? — 
By God's love I go to meet, 
Love I thee with love complete. 

Lean thy face down; drop it in 

These two hands, that I may hold 
'Twixt their palms thy cheek and chin, 

Stroking back the curls of gold: 
'Tis a fair, fair face, in sooth — 
Larger eyes and redder mouth 
Than mine were in my first youth. 



BERTHA IN THE LANE. 67 

Thou art younger by seven years: 

Ah! — so bashful at my gaze, 
That the lashes, hung with tears. 

Grow too heavy to upraise? 
I would wound thee by no touch 
Which thy shyness feels as such. 
Dost thou mind me, Dear, so much*? 



Have I not been nigh a mother 
To thy sweetness — tell me, Dearl 

Have we not loved one another 
Tenderly, from year to year. 

Since our dying mother mild 

Said with accents undefiled, 

"Child, be mother to this child!" 

Mother, mother, up in heaven. 

Stand up on the jasper sea, 
And be witness I have given 

All the gifts required of me, — 
Hope that blessed me, bliss that crowned. 
Love that left me with a wound. 
Life itself that tumeth round! 

Mother, mother, thou art kind. 
Thou art standing in the room. 

In a molten glory shrined 
That rays off into the gloom! 

But thy smile is bright and bleak 

Like cold waves — I cannot speak, 

I sob in it, and grow weak. 

5* 



68 BERTHA IN THE LANE. 

Ghostly mother, keep aloof 

One hour longer from my soul, 

For I still am thinking of 

Earth's warm-beating joy and dole! 

On my finger is a ring 

Which I still see glittering 

When the night hides everything. 

Little sister, thou art pale! 

Ah, I have a wandering brain — 
But I lose that fever-bale. 

And my thoughts grow calm again. 
Lean down closer — closer still! 
I have words thine ear to fill. 
And would kiss thee at my will. 

Dear, I heard thee in the spring. 

Thee and Robert — through the trees,- 

When we all went gathering 

Boughs of May-bloom for the bees. 

Do not start so! think instead 

How the sunshine overhead 

Seemed to trickle through the shade. 

What a day it was, that day! 

Hills and vales did openly 
Seem to heave and throb away 

At the sight of the great sky. 
And the silence, as it stood 
In the glory's golden flood, 
Audibly did bud, and bud. 



BERTHA IN THE LANE. 69 

Through the winding hedgerows green, 

How we wandered, I and you, 
With the bowery tops shut in, 

And the gates that showed the view! 
How we talked there! thrushes soft 
Sang our praises out, or oft 
Bleatings took them, from the croft: 



Till the pleasure grown too strong 

Left me muter evermore, 
And, the winding road being long, 

I walked out of sight, before. 
And so, wTapt in musings fond. 
Issued (past the wayside pond) 
On the meadow-lands beyond. 

I sat down beneath the beech 

Which leans over to the lane. 
And the far sound of your speech 

Did not promise any pain; 
And I blessed you full and free. 
With a smile stooped tenderly 
O'er the May-flowers on my knee. 

But the sound grew into word 

As the speakers drew more near — 
Sweet, forgive me that I heard 

What you wished me not to hear. 
Do not weep so, do not shake, 
Oh, — I heard thee. Bertha, make 
Good true answers for my sake. 



70 BERTHA IN THE LANE. 

Yes, and he too! let him stand 

In thy thoughts untouched by blame. 

Could he help it, if my hand 

He had claimed with hasty claim? 

That was wrong perhaps — but then 

Such things be — and will, again. 

Women cannot judge for men. 

Had he seen thee when he swore 
He would love but me alone? 

Thou wast absent, sent before 
To our kin in Sidmouth town. 

When he saw thee who art best 

Past compare, and loveliest, 

He but judged thee as the rest. 

Could we blame him with grave words, 
Thou and I, Dear, if we might? 

Thy brown eyes have looks like birds 
Flying straightway to the light: 

Mine are older. — Hush! — look out — 

Up the street! Is none without? 

How the poplar swings about! 

And that hour— beneath the beech, 
When I listened in a dream, 

And he said in his deep speech 
That he owed me all esteem^ — 

Each word swam in on my brain 

With a dim, dilating pain, 

Till it burst with that last strain. 



BERTHA IN THE LANE. J I 

I fell flooded with a dark, 

In the silence of a swoon. 
When I rose, still cold and stark, 

There was night; I saw the moon: 
And the stars, each in its place. 
And the May-blooms on the grass, 
Seemed to wonder what I was. 



And I walked as if apart 

From myself, when I could stand, 
And I pitied my own heart. 

As if I held it in my hand. 
Somewhat coldly, with a sense 
Of fulfilled benevolence. 
And a "Poor thing" negligence. 

And I answered coldly too. 

When you met me at the door; 
And I only heard the dew 

Dripping from me to the floor: 
And the flowers I bade you see. 
Were too withered for the bee, — 
As my life, henceforth, for me. 

Do not weep so — Dear — heart-warm! 

All was best as it befell. 
If I say he did me harm, 

I speak wild, — I am not well. 
All his words were kind and good — 
He esteemed me. Only, blood 
Runs so faint in womanhood! 



7 2 BERTHA IN THE LANE. 

Then I always was too grave, — 
Like the saddest ballad sung, — 

With that look, besides, we have 
In our faces, who die young. 

I had died, Dear, all the same; 

Life's long, joyous, jostling game 

Is too loud for my meek shame. 



We are so unlike each other, 

Thou and I, that none could guess 

We were children of one mother, 
But for mutual tenderness. 

Thou art rose-lined from the cold, 

And meant verily to hold 

Life's pure pleasures manifold. 

I am pale as crocus grows 

Close behind a rose-tree's root; 
Whosoe'er would reach the rose. 

Treads the crocus underfoot. 
/, like May-bloom on thorn-tree, 
Thou, like merry summer-bee, — 
Fit that I be plucked for thee! 

Yet who plucks me? — no one mourns, 

I have lived my season out. 
And now die of my own thorns 

Which I could not live without 
Sweet, be merry! How the light 
Comes and goes! If it be night, 
Keep the candles in my sight 



' BERTHA IN THE LANE. 73 

Are there footsteps at the do'or'? 

Look out quickly. Yea, or nay? 
Some one might be waiting for 

Some last word that I might say. 
Nayl So best! — so angels would 
Stand off clear from deathly road. 
Not to cross the sight of God. 



Colder grow my hands and feet. 

When I wear the shroud I made, 
Let the folds lie straight and neat, 

And the rosemary be spread, 
That if any friend should come, 
(To see thee^ Sweet!) all the room 
May be lifted out of gloom. 

And, dear Bertha, let me keep 
On my hand this little ring. 
Which at nights, when others sleep, 

I can still see glittering. 
Let me wear it out of sight. 
In the grave, — where it will light 
All the dark up, day and night. 

On that grave drop not a tear! 

Else, though fathom-deep the place, 
Through the woollen shroud I wear 

I shall feel it on my face. 
Rather smile there, blessed one, 
Thinking of me in the sun. 
Or forget me — smiling on! 



74 BERTHA IN THE LANE. 

Art thou near me? nearer! so — 
Kiss me close upon the eyes, 
That the earthly light may go 

Sweetly, as it used to rise 
When I watched the morning-grey 
Strike, betwixt the hills, the way 
He was sure to come that day. 

So, — no more vain words be said! 

The hosannas nearer roll. 
Mother, — smile now on thy Dead, 

I am death-strong in my soul. 
Mystic Dove alit on cross. 
Guide the poor bird of the snows 
Through the snow-wind above loss! 

Jesus, Victim, comprehending 
Love's divine self-abnegation. 

Cleanse my love in its self-spending, 
And absorb the poor libation! 

Wind my thread of life up higher. 

Up, through angels' hands of fire! 

I aspire while I expire. 



CATARINA TO CAMOENS. 75 



CATARINA TO CAMOENS; 

DYING IN HIS ABSENCE ABROAD, AND REFERRING TO THE POEM 
IN WHICH HE RECORDED THE SWEETNESS OF HER EYES. 

On the door you will not enter, 
I have gazed too long: adieu! 
Hope withdraws her peradventure; 
Death is near me, — and not j^ou. 
Come, O lover, 
Close and cover 
These poor eyes, you called, I ween, 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!" 



When I heard you sing that burden 

In my vernal days and bowers. 
Other praises disregarding, 

I but barkened that of yours — 
Only saying 
In heart-playing, 
"Blessed eyes mine eyes have been 
If the sweetest, his have seen!" 

But all changes. At this vesper. 
Cold the sun shines down the door. 

If you stood there, would you whisper 
"Love, I love you," as before, — 



76 CATARINA TO CAMOENS. 

Death pervading 

Now, and shading 
Eyes you sang of, that yestreen, 
As the sweetest ever seeni 



Yes. I think, were you beside them, 

Near the bed I die upon, 
Though their beauty you denied them, 
As you stood there, looking down. 
You would truly 
Call them duly. 
For the love's sake found therein, 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen." 

And [{you looked down upon them, 

And if fhey looked up to jou, 
All the light which has foregone them 
Would be gathered back anew: 
They would truly 
Be as duly 
Love-transformed to beauty's sheen, 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen." 

But, ah me! you only see me. 

In your thoughts of loving man. 
Smiling soft perhaps and dreamy 
Through the wavings of my fan; 
And unweeting 
Go repeating. 
In your reverie serene, 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen — '' 



CATARINA TO CAMOENS. 77 

While my spirit leans and reaches 

From my body still and pale, 
Fain to hear what tender speech is 
In your love to help my bale. 
O my poet, 
Come and show it! 
Come, of latest love, to glean 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen." 



O my poet, O my prophet, 

When you praised their sweetness so, 
Did you think, in singing of it, 
That it might be near to go 
Had you fancies 
From their glances, 
That the grave would quickly screen 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen*?" 



No reply. The fountain's warble 
In the courtyard sounds alone. 
As the water to the marble 
So my heart falls with a moan 
From love-sighing 
To this dying. 
Death forerunneth Love to win 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen" 

Will you come? When Fm departed 
Where all sweetnesses are hid. 

Where thy voice, my tender-hearted, 
Will not lift up either lid. 



78 CATARINA TO CAMOENS. 

Cry, O lover, 

Love is over! 
Cry, beneath the cypress green, 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!" 



When the angelus is ringing, 

Near the convent will you walk. 
And recall the choral singing 

Which brought angels down our talk'? 
Spirit-shriven 
I viewed Heaven, 
Till you smiled — "Is earth unclean. 
Sweetest eyes, were ever seen?" 

When beneath the palace-lattice 

You ride slow as you have done. 
And you see a face there, that is 
Not the old familiar one, — 
Will you oftly 
Murmur softly, 
"Here ye watched me morn and e'en. 
Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!" 

When the palace-ladies, sitting 

Round your gittern, shall have said, 
"Poet, sing those verses written 
For the lady who is dead," 
Will you tremble 
Yet dissemble, — 
Or sing hoarse, with tears between, 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen?" 



CATARINA TO CAMOENS. 7Q 

"Sweetest eyes!'^ how sweet in flowings 

The repeated cadence is! 
Though you sang a hundred poems, 
Still the best one would be this. 
I can hear it 
'Twixt my spirit 
And the earth-noise intervene — 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!" 

But the priest waits for the praying, 
And the choir are on their knees, 
And the soul must pass away in 

Strains more solemn high than these. 
Miserere 
For the weary! 
Oh, no longer for Catrine 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!" 

Keep my riband, take and keep it, 
(I have loosed it from my hair,)* 
Feeling, while you overweep it, 
Not alone in your despair. 
Since with saintly 
Watch unfaintly 
Out of heaven shall o'er you lean 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen." 

But — but now — yet unremoved 

Up to heaven, they glisten fast; 
You may cast away. Beloved, 

In your future all my past: 

* She left him the riband from her hair. 



8o CATARINA TO CAMOENS. 

Such old phrases 

May be praises 
For some fairer bosom-queen — 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!" 



Eyes of mine, what are ye doing? 

Faithless, faithless, — praised amiss 
If a tear be of your showing, 
Dropt for any hope of his! 
Death has boldness 
Beside coldness. 
If unworthy tears demean 
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen/^ 

I will look out to his future; 
I will bless it till it shine. 
Should he ever be a suitor 
Unto sweeter eyes than mine, 
Sunshine gild them. 
Angels shield them, 
Whatsoever eyes terrene 
Be the sweetest his have seen! 



LADY GERALDINE's COURTSHIP. 8 1 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 



A ROMANCE OF THE AGE. 



A poet writes to his friend. Place — A room in Wyco7nbe Hall. 
Time — Late in the evening. 

Dear my friend and fellow-student, I would lean my 

spirit o'er you! 
Down the purple of this chamber tears should scarcely 

run at will. 
I am humbled who was humble. Friend, I bow my 

head before you: 
You should lead me to my peasants, but their faces 

are too still. 



There's a lady, an earl's daughter, — she is proud and 

she is noble, 
And she treads the crimson carpet and she breathes 

the perfumed air. 
And a kingly blood sends glances up, her princely eye 

to trouble. 
And the shadow of a monarch's crown is softened in 

her hair. 



She i^as halls among the woodlands, she has castles by 

the breakers, 
She has farms and she has manors, she can threaten 

and command, 

Elizabeth Browning. V 



82 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 

And the palpitating engines snort in steam across her 

acres, 
As they mark upon the blasted heaven the measure of 

the land. 



There are none of England's daughters who can show 

a prouder presence: 
Upon princely suitors praying, she has looked in her 

disdain. 
She was sprung of English nobles, I was born of English 

peasants; 
What was / that I should love her, save for competence 

to pain? 

I was only a poor poef, made for singing at her case- 
ment, 

As the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of 
other things. 

Oh, she walked so high above me, she appeared to 
my abasement, 

In her lovely silken murmur, like an angel clad in 



wmgs 



Many vassals bow before her as her carriage sweeps 

their doorways; 
She has blest their little children, as a priest or queen 

were she: 
Far too tender, or too cruel far, her smile upon the 

poor was. 
For I thought it was the same smile which she used 

to smile on me. 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 83 

She has voters in the commons, she has lovers in the 

palace, 
And of all the fair court ladies, few have jewels half 

as fine; 
Oft the prince has named her beauty 'twixt the red wine 

and the chalice: 
Oh, and what was / to love her? my beloved, my 

Geraldine! 



Yet I could not choose but love her: I was born to 

poet-uses. 
To love all things set above me, all of good and all 

of fair. 
Nymphs of mountain, not of valley, we are wont to 

call the Muses; 
And in nympholeptic climbing, poets pass from mount 

to star. 



And because I was a poet, and because the public 

praised me. 
With a critical deduction for the modern writer's 

fault, 
I could sit at rich men's tables, — though the courtesies 

that raised me. 
Still suggested clear between us the pale spectrum of 

the salt. 



And they praised me in her presence; — "Will your 

book appear this summer?" 
Then returning to each other — "Yes, our plans are for 

the moors," 

6* 



84 LADY GERALDINE's COURTSHIP. 

Then with whisper dropped behind me — ^^ There he is! 
the latest comer. 

Oh, she only likes his v rses! what is over, she en- 
dures. 



"Quite low-born, self-educated 1 somewhat gifted though 

by nature, 
And we make a point of asking him, — of being very 

kind. 
You may speak, he does not hear you! and besides, 

he writes no satire, — 
All these serpents kept by charmers leave the natural 

sting behind." 

I grew scornfuller, grew colder, as I stood up there 

among them, 
Till as frost intense will burn you, the cold scorning 

scorched my brow; 
When a sudden silver speaking, gravely cadenced, 

overrung them. 
And a sudden silken stirring touched my inner nature 

through. 

I looked upward and beheld her: with a calm and 

regnant spirit, 
Slowly round she swept her eyelids, and said clear 

before them all — 
"Have you such superfluous honour, sir, that able to 

confer it 
You will come down, Mister Bertram, as my guest to 

Wycombe Halir' 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 85 

Here she paused; she had been paler at the first word 

of her speaking, 
But because a silence followed it, blushed somewhat, 

as for shame. 
Then, as scorning her own feeling, resumed calmly — 

"I am seeking 
More distinction than these gentlemen think worthy of 

my claim. 



"Nevertheless, you see, I seek it — not because I am 
a woman," 

(Here her smile sprang like a fountain and, so, over- 
flowed her mouth,) 

"But because my woods in Sussex have some purple 
shades at gloaming 

Which are worthy of a king in state, or poet in his 
youth. 

"I invite you. Mister Bertram, to no scene for worldly 

speeches — 
Sir, I scarce should dare — but only where God asked 

the thrushes first: 
And if _you will sing beside them, in the covert of my 

beeches, 
I will thank you for the woodlands, — for the human 

world, at worst." 

Then she smiled around right childly, then she gazed 

around right queenly. 
And I bowed — I could not answer; alternated light 

and gloom — 



86 LADY GERALDINE's COURTSHIP. 

While as one who quells the lions, with a steady eye 

serenely, 
She, with level fronting eyelids, passed out stately from 

the room. 



Oh, the blessed woods of Sussex! I can hear them still 

around me. 
With their leafy tide of greenery still rippling up the 

wind. 
Oh, the cursed woods of Sussex! where the hunter's 

arrow found me. 
When a fair face and a tender voice had made me 

mad and blind! 



In that ancient hall of Wycombe thronged the nume- 
rous guests invited. 

And the lovely London ladies trod the floors with 
gliding feet; 

And their voices low with fashion, not with feeling, 
softly freighted 

All the air about the windows with elastic laughters 
sweet. 



For at eve the open windows flung their light out on 

the terrace 
Which the floating orbs of curtains did with gradual 

shadow sweep, 
While the swans upon the river, fed at morning by 

the heiress, 
Trembled downward through their snowy wings at 

music in their sleep. 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 87 

And there evermore was music, both of instrument and 
singing, 

Till the finches of the shrubberies grew restless in the 
dark; 

But the cedars stood up motionless, each in a moon- 
light-ringing, 

And the deer, half in the glimmer, strewed the hol- 
lows of the park. 

And though sometimes she would bind me with her 

silver-corded speeches 
To commix my words and laughter with the converse 

and the jest. 
Oft I sat apart and, gazing on the river through the 

beeches. 
Heard, as pure the swans swam down it, her pure 

voice o'erfloat the rest. 



In the morning horn of huntsman, hoof of steed and 

laugh of rider, 
Spread out cheery from the court-yard till we lost them 

in the hills, 
While herself and other ladies, and her suitors left 

beside her. 
Went a-wandering up the gardens through the laurels 

and abeles. 



Thus, her foot upon the new-mown grass, bareheaded, 

with the flowing 
Of the virginal white vesture gathered closely to her 

throat. 



88 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 

And the golden ringlets in her neck just quickened by 

her going, 
And appearing to, breathe sun for air, and doubting if 

to float, — 



With a branch of dewy maple, which her right hand 

held above her. 
And which trembled a green shadow in betwixt her 

and the skies. 
As she turned her face in going, thus, she drew me 

on to love her. 
And to worship the divineness of the smile hid in her 

eyes. 

For her eyes alone smile constantly; her lips have 

serious sweetness, 
And her front is calm, the dimple rarely ripples on 

the cheek; 
But her deep blue eyes smile constantly, as if they jn 

discreetness 
Kept the secret of a happy dream she did not care to 

speak. 

Thus she drew me the first morning, out across into 

the garden, 
And I walked among her noble friends and could not 

keep behind. 
Spake she unto all and unto me — "Behold, I am the 

warden 
Of the song-birds in these lindens, which are cages to 

their mind. 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 89 

"But within this swarded circle into which the lime- 
walk brings us, 

Whence the beeches, rounded greenly, stand away in 
reverent fear, 

I will let no music enter, saving what the fountain 
sings us 

Which the liHes round the basin may seem pure enough 
to hear. 



"The live air that waves the lilies waves the slender 
jet of water 

Like a holy thought sent feebly up from soul of fast- 
ing saint: 

Whereby lies a marble Silence, sleeping, (Lough the 
sculptor wrought her,) 

So asleep she is forgetting to say Hush! — a fancy 
quaint. 

%Mark how heavy white her eyelids! not a dream be- 
tween them lingers; 

And the left hand's index droppeth from the lips upon 
the cheek: 

While the right hand, — with the symbol-rose held slack 
within the fingers, — 

Has fallen backward in the basin — yet this Silence 
will not speak! 

"That the essential meaning growing may exceed the 

special symbol, 
Is the thought as I conceive it: it applies more high 

and low. 



go LADY GERALDINE S COURTSHIP. 

Our true noblemen will often through right nobleness 

grow humble, 
And assert an inward honour by denying outward 

show." 



"Nay, your Silence," said I, "truly, holds her symbol- 
rose but slackly, 

Yet she holds it, or would scarcely be a Silence to our 
ken: 

And your nobles wear their ermine on the outside, or 
walk blackly 

In the presence of the social law as mere ignoble 
men. 



"Let the poets dream such dreaming! madam, in these 

British islands 
Tis the substance that wanes ever, 'tis the symbol that 

exceeds. 
Soon we shall have nought but symbol: and, for statues 

like this Silence, 
Shall accept the rose's image — in another case, the 

weed's." 



"Not so quickly," she retorted, — "I confess, where'er 

you go, you 
Find for things, names — shows for actions, and pure 

gold for honour clear: 
But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will 

throw you 
The world's book which now reads drily, and sit down 

with Silence here." 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 9 1 

Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in 

indignation; 
Friends who listened, laughed her words off, while her 

lovers deemed her fair: 
A fair woman, flushed with feeling, in her noble-lighted 

station 
Near the statue's white reposing — and both bathed in 

sunny air! 

With the trees round, not so distant but you heard 

their vernal murmur. 
And beheld in light and shadow the leaves in and 

outward move, 
And the little fountain leaping toward the sun-heart 

to be warmer, 
Then recoiling in a tremble from the too much light 

above. 

'Tis a picture for remembrance. And thus, morning 

after morning, 
Did I follow as she drew me by the spirit to her feet. 
Why, her greyhound followed also! dogs — we both 

were dogs for scorning — 
To be sent back when she pleased it and her path 

lay through the wheat. 

And thus, morning after morning, spite of vows and 

spite of sorrow. 
Did I follow at her drawing, while the week-days 

passed along. 
Just to feed the swans this noontide, or to see the 

fawns to-morrow. 
Or to teach the hill-side echo some sweet Tuscan in 

a song. 



92 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 

Ay, for sometimes on the hill- side, while we sat down 

in the gowans, 
With the forest green behind us and its shadows cast 

before. 
And the river running under, and across it from the 

rowans 
A brown partridge whirring near us till we felt the air 

it bore,— 



There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the 

poems 
Made to Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various 

of our own; 
Read the pastoral parts of Spenser, or the subtle inter- 

flowings 
Found in Petrarch's sonnets — here's the book, the 

leaf is folded down! — 



Or at times a modern volume, Wordsworth's solemn- 
thoughted idyl, 

Howitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's enchanted re- 
verie, — 

Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut 
deep down the middle. 

Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined 
humanity. 

Or at times I read there, hoarsely, some new poem of 

my making: 
Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their 

worth, 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 93 

For the echo in you breaks upon the words which 

you are speaking, 
And the chariot wheels jar in the gate through which 

you drive them forth. 



After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence 
round us flinging 

A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings 
at the breast, 

She would break out on a sudden in a gush of wood- 
land singing. 

Like a child's emotion in a god — a naiad tired of 
rest. 



Oh, to see or hear her singing! scarce I know which 

is divinest, 
For her looks sing too — she modulates her gestures 

on the tune, 
And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and 

when the notes are finest, 
'Tis the eyes that shoot out vocal light and seem to 

swell them on. 



Then we talked — oh, how we talked! her voice, so 

cadenced in the talking, 
Made another singing — of the soul! a music without 

bars: 
While the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming round 

where we were walking. 
Brought interposition worthy-sweet, as skies about the 

stars. 



94 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 

And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she 

always thought them; 
She had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on 

branch, 
Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way 

besought them 
In the birchen- wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the 

grange. 

In her utmost lightness there is truth — and often she 
speaks lightly, 

Has a grace in being gay which even mournful souls 
approve, 

For the root of some grave earnest thought is under- 
struck so rightly 

As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above. 

And she talked on — we talked, rather! upon all things, 

substance, shadow, 
Of the sheep that browsed the grasses, of the reapers 

in the corn, 
Of the little children from the schools, seen winding 

through the meadow. 
Of the poor rich world beyond them, still kept poorer 

by its scorn. 

So, of men, and so, of letters — books are men of 

higher stature. 
And the only men that speak aloud for future times 

to hear; 
So, of mankind in the abstract, which grows slowly 

into nature. 
Yet will lift the cry of "progress," as it trod from 

sphere to sphere. 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 95 

And her custom was to praise me when I said, — "The 

Age culls simples, 
With a broad clown's back turned broadly to the 

glory of the stars. 
We are gods by our own reckoning, and may well shut 

up the temples. 
And wield on, amid the incense-steam, the thunder of 

our cars. 

"For we throw out acclamations of self- thanking, self- 
admiring, 

With, at every mile run faster, — ^O the wondrous, 
wondrous age!' 

Little thinking if we work our souls as nobly as our 
iron, 

Or if angels will commend us at the goal of pilgrimage. 

"Why, what is this patient entrance into nature's deep 

resources 
But the child's most gradual learning to walk upright 

without bane"? 
When we drive out, from the cloud of steam, majestical 

white horses. 
Are we greater than the first men, who led black ones 

by the mane? 

"If we trod the deeps of ocean, if we struck the stars 
in rising. 

If we wrapped the globe intently with one hot electric 
breath, 

'Twere but power within our tether, no new spirit- 
power comprising, 

And in life we were not greater men, nor bolder men 
in death." 



g6 LADY geraldine's courtship. 

She was patient with my talking; and I loved her, 
loved her, certes 

As I loved all heavenly objects, with uplifted eyes 
and hands; 

As I loved pure inspirations, loved the graces, loved 
the virtues, 

In a Love content with writing his own name on de- 
sert sands. 

Or at least I thought so, purely; thought no idiot 

Hope was raising 
Any crown to crown Love's silence, silent Love that 

sat alone: 
Out, alas! the stag is like me, he that tries to go on 

grazing 
With the great deep gun- wound in his neck, then 

reels with sudden moan. 

It was thus I reeled. I told you that her hand had 

many suitors; 
But she smiles them down imperially as Venus did the 

waves, 
And with such a gracious coldness that they cannot 

press their futures 
On the present of her courtesy, which yieldingly enslaves. 

And this morning as I sat alone within the inner 
chamber 

With the great saloon beyond it, lost in pleasant 
thought serene, 

For I had been reading Camoens, that poem you re- 
member, 

Which his lady's eyes are praised in as the sweetest 
ever seen. 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 97 

And the book lay open, and my thought flew from it, 

taking from it 
A vibration and impulsion to an end beyond its own, 
As the branch of a green osier, when a child would 

overcome it, 
Springs up freely from his clasping and goes swinging 

in the sun. 

As I mused I heard a murmur; it grew deep as it grew 

longer, 
Speakers using earnest language — "Lady Geraldine, 

you would!'' 
And I heard a voice that pleaded, ever on in accents 

stronger. 
As a sense of reason gave it power to make its rhetoric 

good. 

Well I knew that voice; it was an earFs, of soul that 

matched his station. 
Soul completed into lordship, might and right read on 

his brow; 
Very finely courteous; far too proud to doubt his 

domination 
Of the common people, he atones for grandeur by a 

bow. 

High straight forehead, nose of eagle, cold blue eyes 

of less expression 
Than resistance, coldly casting off the looks of other 

men, 
As steel, arrows; unelastic lips which seem to taste 

possession 
And be cautious lest the common air should injure or 

distrain. 

Elizabeth Broiunin^, 7 



98 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 

For the rest, accomplished, upright, — ay, and stand- 
ing by his order 

With a bearing not ungraceful; fond of art and letters 
too; 

Just a good man made a proud man, — as the sandy 
rocks that border 

A wild coast, by circumstances, in a regnant ebb and 
flow. 

Thus, I knew that voice, I heard it, and I could not 

help the hearkening: 
In the room I stood up blindly, and my burning heart 

within 
Seemed to seethe and fuse my senses till they ran on 

all sides darkening. 
And scorched, weighed like melted metal round my 

feet that stood therein. 

And that voice, I heard it pleading, for love's sake, 

for wealth, position, 
For the sake of liberal uses and great actions to be 

done — 
And she interrupted gently, "Nay, my lord, the old 

tradition 
Of your Normans, by some worthier hand than mine 

is, should be won." 

"Ah, that white hand!" he said quickly, — and in his 

he either drew it 
Or attempted — for with gravity and instance she replied, 
"Nay, indeed, my lord, this talk is vain, and we had 

best eschew it 
And pass on, like friends, to other points less easy to 

decide." 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 99 

What he said again, I know not: it is likely that his 

trouble 
Worked his pride up to the surface; for she answered 

in slow scorn. 
"And your lordship judges rightly. Whom I marry, 

shall be noble, 
Ay, and wealthy. I shall never blush to think how he 

was born." 



There, I maddened! her words stung me. Life swept 

through me into fever. 
And my soul sprang up astonished, sprang full-statured 

in an hour. 
Know you what it is when anguish, with apocal)^tic 

NEVER, 

To a Pythian height dilates you, and despair sublimes 
to power? 

From my brain the soul-wings budded, waved a flame 

about my body. 
Whence conventions coiled to ashes. I felt self-drawn 

out, as man. 
From amalgamate false natures, and I saw the skies 

grow ruddy 
With the deepening feet of angels, and I knew what 

spirits can. 

I was mad, inspired — say either! (anguish worketh 

inspiration) 
Was a man or beast — perhaps so, for the tiger roars 

when speared; 

7* 



lOO LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 

And I walked on, step by step along the level of my 

passion — 
Oh my soul! and passed the doorway to her face, and 

never feared. 



He had left her, peradventure, when my footstep proved 

my coming, 
But for her — she half arose, then sat, grew scarlet and 

grew pale. 
Oh, she trembled! 'tis so always with a worldly man 

or woman 
In the presence of true spirits; what else can they do 

but quail? 

Oh, she fluttered like a tame bird, in among its forest- 
brothers 

Far too strong for it; then, drooping, bowed her face 
upon her hands; 

And I spake out wildly, fiercely, brutal truths of her 
and others: 

/, she planted in the desert, swathed her, windlike, 
with my sands. 

I plucked up her social fictions, bloody-rooted though 

leaf-verdant, 
Trod them down with words of shaming, — all the purple 

and the gold, 
All the "landed stakes" and lordships, all that spirits 

pure and ardent 
Are cast out of love and honour because chancing not 

to hold. 



LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. lOI 

"For myself I do not argue," said I, "though I love 

you, madam. 
But for better souls that nearer to the height of yours 

have trod: 
And this age shows, to my thinking, still more infidels 

to Adam 
Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God. 

"Yet, O God," I said, "O grave," I said, "O mother's 

heart and bosom. 
With whom first and last are equal, saint and corpse 

and little child! 
We are fools to your deductions, in these figments of 

heart-closing; 
We are traitors to your causes, in these sympathies 

defiled. 

"Learn more reverence, madam, not for rank or wealth 
— that needs no learning, 

That comes quickly, quick as sin does, ay, and cul- 
minates to sin; 

But for Adam's seed, man! Trust me, 'tis a clay above 
your scorning. 

With God's image stamped upon it, and God's kindling 
breath within. 

"What right have you, madam, gazing in your palace- 
mirror daily. 

Getting so by heart your beauty which all others must 
adore, 

While you draw the golden ringlets down your fingers, 
to vow gaily 

You will wed no man that's only good to God, and 
nothing more? 



I02 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 

"Why, what right have you, made fair by that same 
God, the sweetest woman 

Of all women He has fashioned, with your lovely spirit- 
face 

Which would seem too near to vanish if its smile were 
not so human, 

And your voice of holy sweetness, turning common 
words to grace, 

" What right can you have, God's other works to scorn, 

despise, revile them 
In the gross, as mere men, broadly — not as noble men, 

forsooth, — 
As mere Parias of the outer world, forbidden to assoil 

them 
In the hope of living, dying, near that sweetness of 

your mouth? 

"Have you any answer, madam? If my spirit were less 

earthly. 
If its instrument were gifted with a better silver string, 
I would kneel down where I stand, and say — Behold 

me! I am worthy 
Of thy loving, for I love thee. I am worthy as a king. 

"As it is — your ermined pride, I swear, shall feel this 

stain upon her. 
That /, poor, weak, tost with passion, scorned by me 

and you again. 
Love you, madam, dare to love you, to my grief and 

your dishonour, 
To my endless desolation, and your impotent disdain!" 



LADY GERALDINE's COURTSHIP. IO3 

More mad words like these — mere madness! friend, I 

need not write them fuller, 
For I hear my hot soul dropping on the lines in showers 

of tears. 
Oh, a woman! friend, a woman! why, a beast had 

scarce been duller 
Than roar bestial loud complaints against the shining 

of the spheres. 

But at last there came a pause. I stood all vibrating 

with thunder 
Which my soul had used. The silence drew her face 

up like a call. 
Could you guess what word she uttered? She looked 

up, as if in wonder. 
With tears beaded on her lashes, and said — "Bertram!" 

it was all. 



If she had cursed me, and she might have, or if even 

with queenly bearing 
Which at need is used by women, she had risen up 

and said, 
"Sir, you are my guest, and therefore I have given 

you a full hearing: 
Now, beseech you, choose a name exacting somewhat 

less, instead!" — 

I had borne it: but that "Bertram" — why, it lies there 

on the paper 
A mere word, without her accent, and you cannot 

judge the weight 



104 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP* 

Of the calm which crushed my passion: I seemed 

drowning in a vapour; 
And her gentleness destroyed me whom her scorn 

made desolate. 

So, struck backward and exhausted by that inward 

flow of passion 
Which had rushed on, sparing nothing, into forms of 

abstract truth, 
By a logic agonising through unseemly demonstration, 
And by youth's own anguish turning grimly grey the 

hairs of youth, — 

By the sense accursed and instant, that if even I spake 

wisely 
I spake basely — using truth, if what I spake indeed 

was true, 
To avenge wrong on a woman — her^ who sat there 

weighing nicely 
A poor manhood's worth, found guilty of such deeds 

as I could do! — 

By such wrong and woe exhausted — what I suffered 

and occasioned, — 
As a wild horse through the city runs with lightning 

in his eyes, 
And then dashing at a church's cold and passive wall, 

impassioned. 
Strikes the death into his burning brain, and blindly 

drops and dies — 

So I fell, struck down before her — do you blame me, 

friend, for weakness? 
'Twas my strength of passion slew me! — fell before her 

like a stone; 



LADY GERALDINE's COURTSHIP. IO5 

Fast the dreadful world rolled from me on its roaring 

wheels of blackness: 
When the light came I was lying in this chamber and 

alone. 

Oh, of course she charged her lacqueys to bear out 

the sickly burden, 
And to cast it from her scornful sight, but not beyond 

the gate; 
She is too kind to be cruel, and too haughty not to 

pardon 
Such a man as I; 'twere something to be level to her hate. 

But for me — you are conscious why, my friend, I write 

this letter. 
How my life is read all backward, and the charm of 

life undone. 
I shall leave her house at dawn; I would to-night, if I 

were better 

And I charge my soul to hold my body strengthened 

for the sun. 

When the sun has dyed the oriel, I depart, with no 

last gazes, 
No weak moanings, (one word only, left in writing for 

her hands,) 
Out of reach of all derision, and some unavailing 

praises, 
To make front against this anguish in the far and foreign 

lands. 

Blame me not. I would not squander life in grief — I 

am abstemious. 
I but nurse my spirif s falcon that its wing may soar again. 



I06 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 

There's no room for tears of weakness in the blind 

eyes of a Phemius: 
Into work the poet kneads them, and he does not die 

//// then. 



CONCLUSION. 

Bertram finished the last pages, while along the silence 

ever 
Still in hot and heavy splashes fell the tears on every 

leaf. 
Having ended he leans backward in his chair, with 

lips that quiver 
From the deep unspoken, ay, and deep unwritten 

thoughts of grief. 

Soh! how still the lady standeth! 'Tis a dream — a 
dream of mercies! 

'Twixt the purple lattice-curtains how she standeth still 
and pale! 

'Tis a vision, sure, of mercies, sent to soften his self- 
curses, 

Sent to sweep a patient quiet o'er the tossing of his wail. 

"Eyes," he said, "now throbbing through me! are ye 
eyes that did undo me^ 

Shining eyes, like antique jewels set in Parian statue- 
stone ! 

Underneath that calm white forehead are ye ever burning 
torrid 

O'er the desolate sand-desert of my heart and life 
undone 1" 



LADY GERALDINE's COURTSHIP. I07 

With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air the purple 

curtain 
Swelleth in and swelleth out around her motionless 

pale brows, 
While the gliding of the river sends a rippling noise 

for ever 
Through the open casement whitened by the moonlight's 

slant repose. 

Said he — "Vision of a lady! stand there silent, stand 

there steady! 
Now I see it plainly, plainly, now I cannot hope or 

doubt — 
There, the brows of mild repression — there, the lips 

of silent passion. 
Curved like an archer's bow to send the^bitter arrows out." 

Ever, evermore the while in a slow silence she kept 

smiling, 
And approached him slowly, slowly, in a gliding measured 

pace; 
With her two white hands extended as if praying one 

offended. 
And a look of supplication gazing earnest in his face. 

Said he — "Wake me by no gesture, — sound of breath, 

or stir of vesture ! 
Let the blessed apparition melt not yet to its divine! 
No approaching — hush, no breathing! or my heart must 

swoon to death in 
The too utter life thou bringest, O thou dream of 

Geraldine!" 



I08 LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP. 

Ever, evermore the while in a slow silence she kept 
smiling, 

But the tears ran over lightly from her eyes and ten- 
derly: — 

"Dost thou, Bertram, truly love me? Is no woman far 
above me 

Found more worthy of thy poet-heart than such a one 
as /?" 

Said he — "I would dream so ever, like the flowing of 

that river, 
Flowing ever in a shadow greenly onward to the sea! 
So, thou vision of all sweetness, princely to a full 

completeness 
Would my heart and life flow onward, deathward, through 

this dream of thee!" 

Ever, evermore the while in a slow silence she kept 

smiling, 
While the silver tears ran faster down the blushing of 

her cheeks; 
Then with both her hands enfolding both of his, she 

softly told him, 
"Bertram, if I say I love thee, . . . 'tis the vision only 

speaks/' 

Softened, quickened to adore her, on his knee he fell 

before her. 
And she whispered low in triumph, "It shall be as I 

have sworn. 
Very rich he is in virtues, very noble — noble, certes; 
And I shall not blush in knowing that men call him 

lowly born," 



LORD Walter's wife. 109 



LORD WALTER'S WIFE. 

"But why do you go," said the lady, while both sat 

under the yew, 
And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken 

beneath the sea-blue. 

"Because I fear you," he answered; — "because you 
are far too fair. 

And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your gold- 
coloured hair." 

"Oh, that," she said, "is no reason! Such knots are 

quickly undone, 
And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too 

much sun." 

"Yet farewell so," he answered; — "the sun-stroke 's fatal 

at times. 
I value your husband. Lord Walter, whose gallop rings 

still from the limes." 

"Oh, that," she said, "is no reason. You smell a rose 

through a fence: 
If two should smell it, what matters'? who grumbles, 

and Where's the pretence'?" 

"But I," he replied, "have promised another, when love 

was free. 
To love her alone, alone, who alone and afar loves me," 



no LORD Walter's wife. 

"Why, that," she said, "is no reason. Love 's always 

free, I am told. 
Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, 

and think it will hold]" 

"But you," he replied, "have a daughter, a young little 

child, who was laid 
In your lap to be pure; so. Heave you: the angels would 

make me afraid." 

"Oh, that," she said, "is no reason. The angels keep 

out of the way; 
And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you 

should please me and stay." 

At which he rose up in his anger, — "Why, now, you 

no longer are fair! 
Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, 

I swear." 

At which she laughed out in her scorn. — "These men! 

Oh, these men ovemice. 
Who are shocked if a colour, not virtuous, is frankly 

put on by a vice." 

Her eyes blazed upon him — '^ And you! You bring us 

your vices so near 
That we smell them! You think in our presence a 

thought 'twould defame us to hear! 

"What reason had you, and what right, — I appeal to 

your soul from my life, — 
To find me too fair as a woman? Why, sir, I am pure, 

and a wife. 



LORD Walter's wife. hi 

"Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you 

not. Dare you imply. 
I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter 

had set me as high*? 

"If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply 

adapted too much 
To uses unlawful and fatal. The praise! — shall I thank 

you for such? 

"Too fair? — not unless you misuse us! and surely if, 

once in a while, 
You attain to it, straightway you call us no longer too 

fair, but too vile. 

"A moment, I pray your attention! — I have a poor word 

in my head 
1 must utter, though womanly custom would set it down 

better unsaid. 

"You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed 

you a ring. 
You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter! — 

Tve broken the thing. 

"You did me the honour, perhaps, to be moved at my 

side now and then 
In the senses — a vice, I have heard, which is common 

to beasts and some men. 

"Love's a virtue for heroes! — as white as the snow on 

high hills, 
And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, 

endures, and fulfils. 



112 LORD WALTER'S WIFE. 

"I love my Walter profoundly, — you, Maude, though you 

faltered a week, 
For the sake of . . what was it? an eyebrow "2 or, less 

still, a mole on a cheek? 

"And since, when all's said, you're too noble to stoop 

to the frivolous cant 
About crimes irresistible, virtues that swindle, betray 

and supplant, 

"I determined to prove to yourself that, whate'er you 

might dream or avow 
By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than 

you have now. 

"There! look me full in the face! — in the face. Under- 
stand, if you can. 

That the eyes of such women as I am, are clean as 
the palm of a man. 

"Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we 

should cost you a scar — 
You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women 

we are. 

"You wronged me: but then I considered . . . there's 

Walter! And so at the end, 
I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the 

hand of a friend. 

"Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, 

friend of my Walter, be mine! 
Come Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask 

him to dine." 



BIANCA AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES. I I : 



BIANCA AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES. 

The cypress stood up like a church 

That night we felt our love would hold, 
And saintly moonlight seemed to search 

And wash the whole world clean as gold; 
The olives crystallized the vales' 

Broad slopes until the hills grew strong: 
The fireflies and the nightingales 

Throbbed each to either, flame and song. 
The nightingales, the nightingales. 



Upon the angle of its shade 

The cypress stood, self-balanced high; 
Half up, half down, as double made. 

Along the ground, against the sky. 
And we too! from such soul-height went 

Such leaps of blood, so blindly driven, 
We scarce knew if our nature meant 

Most passionate earth or intense heaven. 
The nightingales, the nightingales. 



We paled with love, we shook with love. 
We kissed so close we could not vow; 

Till Giulio whispered, "Sweet, above 
God's Ever guarantees this Now." 

Elizabeth Broivniiis^ O 



114 BIANCA AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES. 

And through his words the nightingales 

Drove straight and full their long clear call, 

Like arrows through heroic mails, 
And love was awful in it all. 

The nightingales, the nightingales. 



O cold white moonlight of the north, 

Refresh these pulses, quench this hell! 
O coverture of death drawn forth 

Across this garden-chamber . . well! 
But what have nightingales to do 

In gloomy England, called the free . . 
(Yes, free to die in! . .) when we two 

Are sundered, singing still to me? 
And still they sing, the nightingales. 



I think I hear him, how he cried 

"My own souFs life" between their notes. 
Each man has but one soul supplied, 

And that's immortal. Though his throat 
On fire with passion now, to her 

He can't say what to me he said! 
And yet he moves her, they aver. 

The nightingales sing through my head, 
The nightingales, the nightingales. 



He says to her what moves her most. 

He would not name his soul within 
Her hearing, — rather pays her cost 

With praises to her lips and chin. 



BIANCA AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES. I I 5 

Man has but one soul, 'tis ordained, 

And each soul but one love, I add; 
Yet souls are damned and love 's profaned. 

These nightingales will sing me mad! 
The nightingales, the nightingales. 



I marvel how the birds can sing. 

There's little difference, in their view. 
Betwixt our Tuscan trees that spring 

As vital flames into the blue, 
And dull round blots of foliage meant 

Like saturated sponges here 
To suck the fogs up. As content 

Is he too in this land, 'tis clear. 
And still they sing, the nightingales. 



My native Florence! dear, forgone! 

I see across the Alpine ridge 
How the last feast-day of St. John 

Shot rockets from Carraia bridge. 
The luminous city, tall with fire, 

Trod deep down in that river of ours. 
While many a boat with lamp and choir 

Skimmed birdlike over glittering towers. 
I will not hear these nightingales. 



I seem to float, we seem to float 

Down Arno's stream in festive guise; 

A boat strikes flame into our boat 
And up that lady seems to rise 

8* 



Il6 BIANCA AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES. 

As then she rose. The shock had flashed 
A vision on us! What a head, 

What leaping eyeballs! — beauty dashed 
To splendour by a sudden dread. 

And still they sing, the nightingales. 



Too bold to sin, too weak to die; 

Such women are so. As for me, 
I would we had drowned there, he and I, 

That moment, loving perfectly. 
He had not caught her with her loosed 

Gold ringlets . . rarer in the south . . 
Nor heard the "Grazie tanto" bruised 

To sweetness by her English mouth. 
And still they sing, the nightingales. 



She had not reached him at my heart 

With her fine tongue, as snakes indeed 
Kill flies; nor had I, for my part. 

Yearned after, in my desperate need. 
And followed him as he did her 

To coasts left bitter by the tide. 
Whose very nightingales, elsewhere 

Delighting, torture and deride! 
For still they sing, the nightingales. 



A worthless woman! mere cold clay 
As all false things are! but so fair, 

She takes the breath of men away 
Who gaze upon her unaware. 



BIANCA AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES. I I 7 

I would not play her larcenous tricks 
To have her looks! She lied and stole, 

And spat into my love's pure pyx 
The rank saliva of her soul. 

And still they sing, the nightingales. 



I would not for her white and pink, 

Though such he likes — her grace of limb. 
Though such he has praised — nor yet, I think. 

For life itself, though spent with him. 
Commit such sacrilege, affront 

God's nature which is love, intrude 
'Twixt two affianced souls, and hunt 

Like spiders, in the altar's wood. 
I cannot bear these nightingales. 



If she chose sin, some gentler guise 

She might have sinned in, so it seems: 
She might have pricked out both my eyes. 

And I still seen him in my dreams! 
— Or drugged me in my soup or wine. 

Nor left me angry afterward: 
To die here with his hand in mine 

His breath upon me, were not hard. 
(Our Lady hush these nightingales!) 



But set a springe for him^ "mio ben," 
My only good, my first last love! — 

Though Christ knows well what sin is, when 
He sees some things done they must move 



Il8 THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

Himself to wonder. Let her pass. 

I think of her by night and day. 
Must / too join her . . out, alas! . . 

With Giulio, in each word I say? 
And evermore the nightingales! 

Giulio, my Giulio! — sing they so, 

And you be silent? Do I speak. 
And you not hear? An arm you throw 

Round some one, and I feel so weak? 
— Oh, owl-like birds! They sing for spite. 

They sing for hate, they sing for doom! 
They'll sing through death who sing through night, 

They'll sing and stun me in the tomb — 
The nightingales, the nightingales. 



THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

FIRST PART. 

"Onora, Onora,'' — her mother is calling, 
She sits at the lattice and hears the dew falling 
Drop after drop from the sycamores laden 
With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden, 
"Night cometh, Onora." 

She looks down the garden-walk caverned with trees, 
To the limes at the end where the green arbour is — 
"Some sweet thought or other may keep where it 

found her. 
While, forgot or unseen in the dreamlight around her, 
Night cometh — Onora!'' 



THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. IIQ 

She looks up the forest whose alleys shoot on 
Like the mute minster-aisles when the anthem is done, 
x\nd the choristers sitting with faces aslant 
Feel the silence to consecrate more than the chant — 
"Onora, Onora!'' 

And forward she looketh across the brown heath — 
"Onora, art coming?" — what is it she seeth? 
Nought, nought but the grey border-stone that is wist 
To dilate and assume a wild shape in the mist — 
"My daughter!" Then over 

The casement she leaneth, and as she doth so 
She is 'ware of her little son playing below: 
"Now where is Onora?" He hung down his head 
And spake not, then answering blushed scarlet-red, — 
"At the tryst with her lover." 

But his mother was wroth: in a sternness quoth she, 
"As thou play' St at the ball art thou playing with me? 
When we know that her lover to battle is gone, 
And the saints know above that she loveth but one 
And will ne'er wed another?" 

Then the boy wept aloud; 'twas a fair sight yet sad 
To see the tears run down the sweet blooms he had: 
He stamped with his foot, said — "The saints know I 

lied 
Because truth that is wicked is fittest to hide! 
Must I utter it, mother?" 

In his vehement childhood he hurried within 
And knelt at her feet as in prayer against sin. 
But a child at a prayer never sobbeth as he — 
"Oh! she sits with the nun of the brown rosary. 
At nights in the ruin — 



I20 THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

The old convent ruin the ivy rots off, 

Where the owl hoots by day and the toad is sun-proof, 

Where no singing-birds build and the trees gaunt and 

grey 
As in stormy sea-coasts appear blasted one way — 
But is this the wind's doing"? 

"A nun in the east wall was buried alive 
Who mocked at the priest when he called her to shrive. 
And shrieked such a curse, as the stone took her breath. 
The old abbess fell backward and swooned unto death 
With an Ave half-spoken. 

"I tried once to pass it, myself and my hound, 
Till, as fearing the lash, down he shivered to ground — 
A brave hound, my mother! a brave hound, ye wot! 
And the wolf thought the same with his fangs at her throat 
In the pass of the Brocken. 

"At dawn and at eve, mother, who sitteth there 
With the brown rosary never used for a prayer? 
Stoop low, mother, low! If we went there to see 
What an ugly great hole in that east wall must be 
At dawn and at even! 

"Who meet there, my mother, at dawn and at even? 
Who meet by that wall, never looking to heaven? 

sweetest my sister, what doeth with thee 
The ghost of a nun with a brown rosary 

And a face turned from heaven? 

"St. Agnes o'erwatcheth my dreams and erewhile 

1 have felt through mine eyelids the warmth of her smile; 
But last night, as a sadness like pity came o'er her, 
She whispered — 'Say two prayers at dawn for Onora 

The Tempted is sinning/'' 



THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 121 

"Onora, Onora!" they heard her not coming, 

Not a step on the grass, not a voice through the 

gloaming; 
But her mother looked up, and she stood on the floor 
Fair and still as the moonlight that came there before, 
And a smile just beginning: 

It touches her lips but it dares not arise 
To the height of the mystical sphere of her eyes, 
And the large musing eyes, neither joyous nor sorry, 
Sing on like the angels in separate glory 
Between clouds of amber; 

For the hair droops in clouds amber-coloured till stirred 
Into gold by the gesture that comes with a word; 
While — O soft! — her speaking is so interwound 
Of the dim and the sweet, 'tis a twilight of sound 
And floats through the chamber. 

"Since thou shrivest my brother, fair mother," said she, 
"I count on thy priesthood for marrying of me; 
And I know by the hills that the battle is done, 
That my lover rides on, will be here with the sun, 
'Neath the eyes that behold thee." 

Her mother sat silent — too tender, I wis. 
Of the smile her dead father smiled dying to kiss: 
But the boy started up pale with tears, passion- wrought — 
^'O wicked fair sister, the hills utter nought! 
If he cometh, who told thee?" 

"I know by the hills," she resumed calm and clear, 
"By the beauty upon them, that he is anear: 
Did they ever look so since he bade me adieu? 
Oh, love in the waking, sweet brother, is true 
As St. Agnes in sleeping!" 



122 THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

Half-ashamed and half softened the boy did not speak, 
And the blush met the lashes which fell on his cheek: 
She bowed down to kiss him: dear saints, did he see 
Or feel on her bosom the brown rosary, 
That he shrank away weeping? 

SECOND PART. 
A bed. Onora sleeping. Angels, but not near. 

First Angel. 

Must we stand so far, and she 

So very fair? 
Second AngeL 

As bodies be. 
First AngeL 

And she so mild? 
Second AngeL 

As spirits when 

They meeken, not to God, but men. 
First AngeL 

And she so young, that I who bring 

Good dreams for saintly children, might 

Mistake that small soft face to-night, 

And fetch her such a blessed thing 

That at her waking she would weep 

For childhood lost anew in sleep. 

How hath she sinned? 
Second AngeL 

In bartering love; 

God's love for man's. 
First AngeL 

We may reprove 

The world for this, not only her: 



THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. ' 1 23 

Let me approach to breathe away 

This dust o' the heart with holy air. 
Second Angel, 

Stand off! She sleeps, and did not pray. 
First Angel, 

Did none pray for her! 
Second Angel, 

Ay, a child, — 

Who never, praying, wept before: 

While, in a mother undefiled, 

Prayer goeth on in sleep, as true 

And pauseless as the pulses do. 
First Angel, 

Then I approach. 
Second Angel, 

It is not WILLED. 

First Angel, 

One word: is she redeemed? 
Second Angel. 

No more! 

The place is filled. 

[Angels vanish. 
Evil Spirit in a Nun^s garb by the bed. 
Forbear that dream — forbear that dream! too near to 
heaven it leaned. 
Onora, in sleep. 
Nay, leave me this — but only this! 'tis but a dream, 
sweet fiend! 
Evil Spirit, It is a thought, 
Onora, in sleep, 

A sleeping thought — most innocent of good: 
It doth the Devil no harm, sweet fiend! it cannot, if it 
would. 



124 THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

I say in it no holy hymn, I do no holy work, 
I scarcely hear the sabbath-bell that chimeth from the 
kirk. 
Evil Spi7^it, 
Forbear that dream — forbear that dream! 
Onora, in sleep. 

Nay, let me dream at least. 
That far-off bell, it may be took for viol at a feast: 
I only walk among the fields, beneath the autumn-sun, 
With my dead father, hand in hand, as I have often done. 

Evil Spirit, 
Forbear that dream — forbear that dream! 
Onora^ in sleep. 

Nay, sweet fiend, let me go: 
I never more can walk with him^ oh, never more but so! 
For they have tied my father's feet beneath the kirk- 
yard-stone. 
Oh, deep and straight, oh, very straight! they move at 

nights alone: 
And then he calleth through my dreams, he calleth 

tenderly, 
"Come forth, my daughter, my beloved, and walk the 
fields with me!" 
Evil Spirit. 
Forbear that dream, or else disprove its pureness by a 
sign. 
OnorUy in sleep. 
Speak on, thou shalt be satisfied, my word shall answer 

thine. 
I heard a bird which used to sing when I a child was 

praying, 
I see the poppies in the corn I used to sport away in; 



THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 1 25 

What shall I do — tread down the dew and pull the 

blossoms blowing? 
Or clap my wicked hands to fright the finches from 

the roweni 

Evil Spirit, 
Thou shalt do something harder still. Stand up where 

thou dost stand 
Among the fields of Dreamland with thy father hand 

in hand, 
And clear and slow repeat the vow, declare its cause 

and kind, 
Which not to break, in sleep or wake thou bearest on 

thy mind. 

Ofiora, in sleep, 

I bear a vow of sinful kind, a vow for mournful cause, 

I vowed it deep, I vowed it strong, the spirits laughed 
applause: 

The spirits trailed along the pines low laughter like a 
breeze. 

While, high atween their swinging tops, the stars ap- 
peared to freeze. 
Evil Spirit. 

More calm and free, speak out to me why such a vow 
was made. 
Onora, in sleep. 

Because that God decreed my death and I shrank back 
afraid. 

Have patience, O dead father mine! I did not fear to 
die — 

I wish I were a young dead child and had thy com- 
pany! 

I wish I lay beside thy feet, a buried three-year child, 



126 THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

And wearing only a kiss of thine upon my lips that 

smiled! 
The linden -tree that covers thee might so have 

shadowed twain, 
For death itself I did not fear — 'tis love that makes 

the pain: 
Love feareth death. I was no child, I was betrothed 

that day; 
I wore a troth-kiss on my lips I could not give away. 
How could I bear to lie content and still beneath a 

stone, 
And feel mine own betrothed go by — alas! no more 

mine own — 
Go leading by in wedding pomp some lovely lady 

brave. 
With cheeks that blushed as red as rose, while mine 

were white in grave? 
How could I bear to sit in heaven, on e'er so high a 

throne, 
And hear him say to her — to her! that else he loveth 

none? 
Though e'er so high I sat above, though e'er so low 

he spake, 
As clear as thunder I should hear the new oath he 

might take, 
That hers, forsooth, were heavenly eyes — ah me, while 

very dim 
Some heavenly eyes (indeed of heaven!) would darken 

down to him! 
Evil Spirit, 
Who told thee thou wast called to death? 
Onora, in sleep, 

I sat all night beside thee; 



THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 12 7 

The grey owl on the ruined wall shut both his eyes 

to hide thee, 
And ever he flapped his heavy wing all brokenly and 

weak, 
And the long grass waved against the sky, around his 

gasping beak: 
I sat beside thee all the night, while the moonlight lay 

forlorn 
Strewn round us like a dead world's shroud in ghastly 

fragments torn: 
And through the night, and through the hush, and 

over the flapping wing. 
We heard beside the Heavenly Gate the angels mur- 
muring : 
We heard them say, "Put day to day, and count the 

days to seven, 
"And God will draw Onora up the golden stairs of 

heaven; 
"And yet the Evil ones have leave that purpose to 

defer, 
"For if she has no need of Him, He has no need of her." 

Evil Spirit, 
Speak out to me, speak bold and free. 
Onora, in sleep. 

And then I heard thee say — 
"I count upon my rosary brown the hours thou hast 

to stay; 
"Yet God permits us Evil ones to put by that decree, 
"Since if thou hast no need of Him, He has no need 

of thee : 
"And if thou wilt forego the sight of angels, verily 
"Thy true love gazing on thy face shall guess what 

angels be; 



128 THE LAV OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

"Nor bride shall pass, save thee'' . . . Alas! — my father's 

hand 's a-cold, 
The meadows seem . . . 
Evil Spirit, 

Forbear the dream, or let the vow be told. 
Onora, in sleep, 
I vowed upon thy rosary brown, this string of antique 

beads, 
By charnel lichens overgrown, and dank among the 

weeds, 
This rosary brown which is thine own, — lost soul of 

buried nun! 
Who, lost by vow, wouldst render now all souls alike 

undone, — 
I vowed upon thy rosary brown, — and, till such vow 

should break, 
A pledge always of living days 'twas hung around my 

neck — 
I vowed to thee on rosary (dead father, look not so!) 
/ would not thank God in my weal^ nor seek God in my 
woe. 
Evil Spirit, 
And canst thou prove . . . 
Onora, in sleep, 

O love, my love! I felt him near again! 
I saw his steed on mountain-head, I heard it on the 

plain ! 
Was this no weal for me to feel? Is greater weal than 

this? 
Yet when he came, I wept his name — and the angels 
heard but his. 
Evil Spirit, 
Well done, well done! 



THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 1 29 

Onora, in sleep. 

Ah me, the sun! the dreamlight 'gins to pine, — 
Ah me, how dread can look the Dead! Aroint thee, 
father mine! 

She starteth from slumber, she sitteth upright, 

And her breath comes in sobs while she stares through 

the night; 
There is nought; the great willow, her lattice before 
Large-drawn in the moon, lieth calm on the floor; 
But her hands tremble fast as their pulses, and, free 
From the death-clasp close over — the brown rosary. 



THIRD PART. 

'Tis a mom for a bridal; the merry bride-bell 

Rings clear through the green-wood that skirts the 

chapelle. 
And the priest at the altar awaiteth the bride, 
And the sacristans slyly are jesting aside 
At the work shall be doing; 

While do\\Ti through the wood rides that fair company, 
The youths with the courtship, the maids with the glee, 
Till the chapel-cross opens to sight, and at once 
All the maids sigh demurely and think for the nonce, 
"And so endeth a wooing!" 

And the bride and the bridegroom are leading the 

way 
With his hand on her rein, and a word yet to say: 

Elizabeth Browning. 9 



t^O THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

Her dropt eyelids suggest the soft answers beneath, 
And the little quick smiles come and go with her 
breath 
When she sigheth or speaketh. 

And the tender bride-mother breaks off unaware 
From an Ave, to think that her daughter is fair, 
Till in nearing the chapel and glancing before, 
She seeth her little son stand at the door: 
Is it play that he seeketh? 

Is it play, when his eyes wander innocent-wild 
And sublimed with a sadness unfitting a child? 
He trembles not, weeps not; the passion is done. 
And calmly he kneels in their midst, with the sun 
On his head like a glory. 

"O fair-featured maids, ye are many!" he cried, 
"But in fairness and vileness who matcheth the bride? 
O brave-hearted youths, ye are many, but whom 
For the courage and woe can ye match with the groom 
As ye see them before ye?" 

Out spake the bride's mother, "The vileness is thine 
If thou shame thine own sister, a bride at the shrine!" 
Out spake the bride's lover, "The vileness be mine 
If he shame mine own wife at the hearth or the shrine 
And the charge be unproved. 

"Bring the charge, prove the charge, brother! speak it 

aloud: 
Let thy father and hers hear it deep in his shroud!" 
— "O father, thou seest, for dead eyes can see, 
How she wears on her bosom a drown rosary, 
O my father beloved!" 



THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. I3I 

Then outlaughed the bridegroom, and outlaughed 

withal 
Both maidens and youths by the old chapel-wall: 
^^So she weareth no love- gift, kind brother," quoth he, 
"She may wear an she listeth a brown rosary. 
Like a pure-hearted lady/' 

Then swept through the chapel the long bridal train; 
Though he spake to the bride she replied not again: 
On, as one in a dream, pale and stately she went 
Where the altar-lights bum o'er the great sacrament. 
Faint with daylight, but steady. 

But her brother had passed in between them and her, 
And calmly knelt down on the high altar-stair — 
Of an infantine aspect so stern to the view 
That the priest could not smile on the child's eyes of 
blue 
As he would for another. 

He knelt like a child marble-sculptured and white 
That seems kneeling to pray on the tomb of a knight, 
With a look taken up to each iris of stone 
From the greatness and death where he kneeleth, but 
none 
From the face of a mother. 

"In your chapel, O priest, ye have wedded and shriven 
Fair wives for the hearth, and fair sinners for heaven; 
But this fairest my sister, ye think now to wed, 
Bid her kneel where she standeth, and shrive her 
instead: 
O shrive her and wed not!" 



132 THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

In tears, the bride's mother,— "Sir priest, unto thee 
Would he lie, as he lied to this fair company." 
In wrath, the bride's lover, — "The lie shall be clear! 
Speak it out, boy! the saints in their niches shall hear: 
Be the charge proved or said not!" 

Then serene in his childhood he lifted his face, 
And his voice sounded holy and fit for the place, — 
"Look down from your niches, ye still saints, and see 
How she wears on her bosom a brown rosary I 
Is it used for the praying?" 

The youths looked aside — to laugh there were a sin — 
And the maidens' lips trembled from smiles shut 

within: 
Quoth the priest, "Thou art wild, pretty boy! Blessed 

she 
Who prefers at her bridal a brown rosary 
To a worldly arraying." 

The bridegroom spake low and led onward the bride. 
And before the high altar they stood side by side: 
The rite-book is opened, the rite is begun, 
They have knelt down together to rise up as one. 
Who laughed by the altar] 

The maidens looked forward, the youths looked around, 
The bridegroom's eye flashed from his prayer at the 

sound; 
And each saw the bride, as if no bride she were. 
Gazing cold at the priest without gesture of prayer, 
As he read from the psalter. 



THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. I 33 

The priest never knew that she did so, but still 
He felt a power on him too strong for his will, 
And whenever the Great Name was there to be read, 
His voice sank to silence — that could not be said, 
Or the air could not hold it. 

"I have sinned," quoth he, "I have sinned, I wot" — 
And the tears ran adown his old cheeks at the 

thought: 
They dropped fast on the book, but he read on the 

same, 
And aye was the silence where should be the Name, — 
As the choristers told it. 

The rite-book is closed, and the rite being done 
They who knelt down together, arise up as one: 
Fair riseth the bride — oh, a fair bride is she, 
But, for all (think the maidens) that brown rosary, 
No saint at her praying! 

What aileth the bridegroom? He glares blank and 

wide; 
Then suddenly turning he kisseth the bride; 
His lip stung her with cold; she glanced upwardly 

mute: 
"Mine own wife," he said, and fell stark at her foot 
In the word he was saying. 

They have lifted him up, but his head sinks away, 
And his face showeth bleak in the sunshine and grey. 
Leave him now where he lieth — for oh, never more 
Will he kneel at an altar or stand on a floor! 
Let his bride gaze upon him. 



134 THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

Long and still was her gaze while they chaftd him 

there 
And breathed in the mouth whose last life had kissed 

her, 
But when they stood up — only they! with a start 
The shriek from her soul struck her pale lips apart: 
She has lived, and foregone him! 

And low on his body she droppeth adown — 
"Didst call me thine own wife, beloved — thine own? 
Then take thine own with thee! thy coldness is warm 
To the world's cold without thee. Come, keep me 
from harm 
In a calm of thy teaching!" 

She looked in his face eamest*long, as in sooth 
There were hope of an answer, and then kissed his 

mouth 
And with head on his bosom, wept, wept bitterly, — 
"Now, O God, take pity — take pity on me! 
God, hear my beseeching !'' 

She was 'ware of a shadow that crossed where she lay, 
She was 'ware of a presence that withered the day: 
Wild she sprang to her feet, — "I surrender to thee 
The broken vow's pledge, the accursed rosary, — 
I am ready for dying!" 

She dashed it in scorn to the marble-paved ground 
Where it fell mute as snow, and a weird music-sound 
Crept up, like a chill, up the aisles long and dim, — 
As the fiends tried to mock at the choristers' hymn 
And moaned in the trying. 



THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 1 35 



FOURTH PART. 

Onora looketh listlessly adown the garden walk: 

"I am weary, O my mother, of thy tender talk. 

I am weary of the trees a-waving to and fro, 

Of the steadfast skies above, the running brooks below. 

All things are the same but I, — only I am dreary. 

And, mother, of my dreariness behold me very weary. 

"Mother, brother, pull the flowers I planted in the 

spring 
And smiled to think I should smile more upon their 

gathering: 
The bees will find out other flowers — oh, pull them, 

dearest mine, 
And carry them and carry me before St. Agnes' 

shrine!'' 
— Whereat they pulled the summer flowers she planted 

in the spring, 
And her and them all mournfully to Agnes' shrine did 

bring. 

She looked up to the pictured saint and gently shook 

her head — 
"The picture is too calm for me — too calm for me^^^ 

she said: 
"The little flowers we brought with us, before it we 

may lay, 
For those are used to look at heaven, — but / must 

turn away, 
Because no sinner under sun can dare or bear to 

gaze 
On God's or angel's holiness, except in Jesu's face." 



136 THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. 

She spoke with passion after pause — "And were it 

wisely done 
If we who cannot gaze above, should walk the earth 

alone? 
If we whose virtue is so weak should have a will so 

strong, 
And stand blind on the rocks to choose the right path 

from the wrong? 
To choose perhaps a lovelit hearth, instead of love and 

heaven,— 
A single rose, for a rose-tree which beareth seven times 

seven? 
A rose that droppeth from the hand, that fadeth in 

the breast, — 
Until, in grieving for the worst, we learn what is the 

best!" 
Then breaking into tears, — "Dear God," she cried, 

"and must we see 
All blissful things depart from us or e'er we go to 

Thee? 
We cannot guess thee in the wood or hear thee in the 

wind? 
Our cedars must fall round us ere we see the light 

behind? 
Ay sooth, we feel too strong, in weal, to need thee on 

that road. 
But woe being come, the soul is dumb that crieth not 

on *God/" 

Her mother could not speak for tears; she ever mused 

thus, 
'^The bees will find out other flowers^ — but what is left 

for us?'' 



A REED. 137 

But her young brother stayed his sobs and knelt beside 

her knee, 
— "Thou sweetest sister in the world, hast never a 

word for mtV 
She passed her hand across his face, she pressed it on 

his cheek, 
So tenderly, so tenderly — she needed not to speak. 
The WTeath which lay on shrine that day, at vespers 

bloomed no more. 
The woman fair who placed it there, had died an hour 

before. 
Both perished mute for lack of root, earth's nourish- 
ment to reach. 
O reader, breathe (the ballad saith) some sweetness 

out of each! 



A REED. 

I AM no trumpet, but a reed; 

No flattering breath shall from me lead 

A silver sound, a hollow sound: 
I will not ring, for priest or king. 
One blast that in re-echoing 

Would leave a bondsman faster bound. 

I am no trumpet, but a reed, — 
A broken reed, the wind indeed 

Left flat upon a dismal shore; 
Yet if a little maid or child 
Should sigh within it, earnest-mild 

This reed will answer evermore. 



138 TO FLUSH, MY DOG. 

I am no trumpet, but a reed; 
Go, tell the fishers, as they spread 

Their nets along the river's edge, 
I will not tear their nets at all. 
Nor pierce their hands, if they should fall: 

Then let them leave me in the sedge. 



TO FLUSH, MY DOG. 

Loving friend, the gift of one 
Who her own true faith has run 

Through thy lower nature, 
Be my benediction said 
With my hand upon thy head, 

Gentle fellow-creature! 

Like a lady's ringlets brown, 
Flow thy silken ears adown 

Either side demurely 
Of thy silver-suited breast 
Shining out from all the rest 

Of thy body purely. 

Darkly brown thy body is, 
Till the sunshine striking this 

Alchemize its dulness. 
When the sleek curls manifold 
Flash all over into gold 

With a burnished fulness. 



TO FLUSH, MY DOG. 1 39 

Underneath my stroking hand, 
Startled eyes of hazel bland 

Kindling, growing larger, 
Up thou leapest with a spring. 
Full of prank and curveting, 

Leaping like a charger. 

Leap! thy broad tail waves a light. 
Leap! thy slender feet are bright, 

Canopied in fringes; 
Leap! those tasselled ears of thine 
Flicker strangely, fair and fine 

Down their golden inches. 

Yet, my pretty, sportive friend, 
Little is't to such an end 

That I praise thy rareness; 
Other dogs may be thy peers 
Haply in these drooping ears 

And this glossy fairness. 

But of thee it shall be said, 
This dog watched beside a bed 

Day and night unweary. 
Watched within a curtained room 
Where no sunbeam brake the gloom 

Round the sick and dreary. 

Roses, gathered for a vase, 
In that chamber died apace. 

Beam and breeze resigning; 
This dog only, waited on. 
Knowing that when light is gone 

Love remains for shining. 



140 TO FLUSH, MY DOG. 

Other dogs in thymy dew 

Tracked the hares and followed through 

Sunny moor or meadow; 
This dog only, crept and crept 
Next a languid cheek that slept, 

Sharing in the shadow. 

Other dogs of loyal cheer 
Bounded at the whistle clear. 

Up the woodside hieing; 
This dog only watched in reach 
Of a faintly-uttered speech 

Or a louder sighing. 

And if one or two quick tears 
Dropped upon his glossy ears 

Or a sigh came double. 
Up he sprang in eager haste. 
Fawning, fondling, breathing fast 

In a tender trouble. 

And this dog was satisfied 

If a pale thin hand would glide 

Down his dewlaps sloping, — 
Which he pushed his nose within, 
After, — platforming his chin 

On the palm left open. 

This dog, if a friendly voice 
Call him now to blither choice 

Than such chamber-keeping, 
"Come out!" praying from the door, — 
Presseth backward as before. 

Up against me leaping. 



TO FLUSH, MY DOG. 14! 

Therefore to this dog will I, 
Tenderly not scornfully, 

Render praise and favour: 
With my hand upon his head, 
Is my benediction said 

Therefore and for ever. 

And because he loves me so, 
Better than his kind will do 

Often man or woman, 
Give I back more love again 
Than dogs often take of men, 

Leaning from my Human. 

Blessings on thee, dog of mine. 
Pretty collars make thee fine. 

Sugared milk make fat thee! 
Pleasures wag on in thy tail. 
Hands of gentle motion fail 

Nevermore, to pat thee! 

Downy pillow take thy head, 
Silken coverlid bestead, 

Sunshine help thy sleeping! 
No fly's buzzing wake thee up. 
No man break thy purple cup 

Set for drinking deep in. 

Whiskered cats arointed flee. 
Sturdy stoppers keep from thee 

Cologne distillations; 
Nuts lie in thy path for stones. 
And thy feast-day macaroons 

Turn to daily rations! 



142 MY DOVES. 

Mock I thee, in wishing weal? — 
Tears are in my eyes to feel 

Thou art made so straitly, 
Blessing needs must straighten too,- 
Little canst thou joy or do, 

Thou who lovest greatly. 

Yet be blessed to the height 
Of all good and all delight 

Pervious to thy nature; 
Only loved beyond that line. 
With a love that answers thine, 

Loving fellow-creature! 



MY DOVES. 

My little doves have left a nest 

Upon an Indian tree 
Whose leaves fantastic take their rest 

Or motion from the sea; 
For, ever there the sea- winds go 
With sunlit paces to and fro. 

The tropic flowers looked up to it, 
The tropic stars looked down, 

And there my little doves did sit 
With feathers softly brown, 

And glittering eyes that showed their right 

To general Nature's deep delight 



MY DOVES. 143 

And God them taught, at every close 

Of murmuring waves beyond 
And green leaves round, to interpose 

Their ehoral voices fond. 
Interpreting that love must be 
The meaning of the earth and sea. 

Fit ministers! Of living loves 

Theirs hath the calmest fashion, 
Their living voice the likest moves 

To lifeless intonation. 
The lovely monotone of springs 
And winds and such insensate things. 

My little doves were ta'en away 

From that glad nest of theirs, 
Across an ocean rolling grey. 

And tempest-clouded airs; 
My little doves, who lately knew 
The sky and wave by warmth and blue. 

And now, within the city prison, 

In mist and chillness pent. 
With sudden upward look they listen 

For sounds of past content. 
For lapse of water, swell of breeze, 
Or nut-fruit falling from the trees. 

The stir without the glow of passion, 

The triumph of the mart. 
The gold and silver as they clash on 

Man's cold metallic heart, 
The roar of wheels, the cry for bread. 
These only sounds are heard instead. 



144 MY DOVES. 

Yet still, as on my human hand 
Their fearless heads they lean, 

And almost seem to understand 
What human musings mean, 

(Their eyes with such a plaintive shine 

Are fastened upwardly to mine) — 

Soft falls their chant as on the nest 

Beneath the sunny zone; 
For love that stirred it in their breast 

Has not aweary grown: 
And 'neath the city's shade can keep 
The well of music clear and deep. 

And love that keeps the music, fills 

With pastoral memories; 
All echoings from out the hills, 

All droppings from the skies, 
All Sowings from the wave and wind. 
Remembered in their chant, I find. 

So teach ye me the wisest part. 

My little doves! to move 
Along the city-ways with heart 

Assured by holy love, 
And vocal with such songs as own 
A fountain to the world unknown. 

'Twas hard, to sing by BabeFs stream — 
More hard, in BabeFs street: 

But if the soulless creatures deem 
Their music not unmeet 

For sunless walls — let us begin. 

Who wear immortal wings within! 



I 



THE SEA-MEW. 1 45 



To me, fair memories belong 
Of scenes that used to bless, 

For no regret, but present song 
And lasting thankfulness; 

And very soon to break away, 

Like types, in purer things than they. 

I will have hopes that cannot fade, 
For flowers the valley yields; 

I will have humble thoughts instead 
Of silent, dewy fields: 

My spirit and my God shall be 

My sea-ward hill, my boundless sea. 



THE SEA-MEW. 

How joyously the young sea-mew 
Lay dreaming on the waters blue 
Whereon our little bark had thrown 
A little shade, the only one, 
But shadows ever man pursue. 

Familiar with the waves and free 
As if their own white foam were he, 
His heart upon the heart of ocean 
Lay learning all its mystic motion, 
And throbbing to the throbbing sea. 

And such a brightness in his eye 
As if the ocean and the sky 
Within him had lit up and nurst 
A soul God gave him not at first, 
To comprehend their majesty. 

EUzaheth Br(nvuhis, 10 



146 THE SEA-MEW. 

We were not cruel, yet did sunder 
His white wing from the blue waves under, 
And bound it, while his fearless eyes 
Shone up to ours in calm surprise, 
As deeming us some ocean wonder. 

We bore our ocean bird unto 
A grassy place where he might view 
The flowers that curtsey to the bees, 
The waving of the tall green trees, 
The falling of the silver dew. 

But flowers of earth were pale to him 
Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim; 
And when earth's dew around him lay 
He thought of ocean's winged spray, 
And his eye waxed sad and dim. 

The green trees round him only made 
A prison with their darksome shade; 
And dropped his wing, and mourned he 
For his own boundless glittering sea — 
Albeit he knew not they could fade. 

Then One her gladsome face did bring, 
Her gentle voice's murm^uring, 
In ocean's stead his heart to move 
And teach him what was human love: 
He thought it a strange mournful thing. 

He lay down in his grief to die, 
(First looking to the sea-like sky 
That hath no waves) because, alas! 
Our human touch did on him pass, 
And with our touch, our agony. 



THE SLEEP. 147 



THE SLEEP. 

Of all the thoughts of God that are 
Borne inward into souls afar, 
Along the Psalmist's music deep, 
Now tell me if that any is, 
For gift or grace surpassing this — 
"He giveth His beloved, sleep]" 

What would we give to our beloved? 
The hero's heart to be unmoved. 
The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep. 
The patriot's voice to teach and rouse. 
The monarch's crown to light the browse- 
He giveth His beloved, sleep. 

What do we give to our beloved? 

A little faith all undisproved, 

A little dust to overweep, 

And bitter memories to make 

The whole earth blasted for our sake: 

He giveth His beloved, sleep. 

"Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes say. 

Who have no tune to charm away 

Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep: 

But never doleful dream again 

Shall break the happy slumber when 

He giveth his beloved, sleep. 

10* 



148 THE SLEEP. 

O earth, so full of dreary noises! 
O men, with wailing in your voices! 
O delved gold, the wailers heap! 

strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! 
God strikes a silence through you all, 
And giveth His beloved, sleep. 

His dews drop mutely on the hill, 
His cloud above it saileth still, 
Though on its slope men sow and reap: 
More softly than the dew is shed. 
Or cloud is floated overhead. 
He giveth His beloved, sleep. 

Ay, men may wonder while they scan 
A living, thinking, feeling man 
Confirmed in such a rest to keep; 
But angels say, and through the word 

1 think their happy smile is heard — 
"He giveth His beloved, sleep.'' 

For me, my heart that erst did go 
Most like a tired child at a show. 
That sees through tears the mummers leap. 
Would now its wearied vision close. 
Would childlike on His love repose 
Who giveth His beloved, sleep. 

And friends, dear friends, when it shall be 
That this low breath is gone from me. 
And round my bier ye come to weep. 
Let One, most loving of you all. 
Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall! 
"He giveth His beloved sleep." 



cowper's grave. 149 



COWPER'S GRAVE. 

It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's 

decaying; 
It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their 

praying: 
Yet let the grief and humbleness as low as silence 

languish: 
Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she 

gave her anguish. 

O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the death- 
less singing! 

O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand 
was clinging! 

O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths 
beguiling, 

Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died 
while ye were smiling! 

And now, what time ye all may read through dimming 
tears his story. 

How discord on the music fell and darkness on the 
glory. 

And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wan- 
dering lights departed, 

He wore no less a loving face because so broken- 
hearted, — 



150 cowper's grave. 

He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation, 

And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adora- 
tion; 

Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good for- 
saken. 

Named softly as the household name of one whom God 
hath taken. 

With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think 

upon him, 
With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose heaven 

hath won him. 
Who suffered once the madness-cloud to His own love 

to blind him. 
But gently led the blind along where breath and bird 

could find him; 

And wrought within his shattered brain such quick 
poetic senses 

As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious in- 
fluences: 

The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its 
number. 

And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like 
a slumber. 

Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his 

home-caresses, 
Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses: 
The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's 

ways removing. 
Its women and its men became, beside him, true and 

loving. 



cowper's grave. 151 

And though, in bhndness, he remained unconscious of 

that guiding, 
And things provided came without the sweet sense of 

providing. 
He testified this solemn truth, while phrenzy desolated, 
— Nor man nor nature satisfies whom only God created. 

Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother while 

she blesses 
And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her 

kisses, — 
That turns his fevered eyes around — "My mother! 

Where's my mother *?" — 
As if such tender words and deeds could come from 

any other! — 

The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending 

o'er him, 
Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love 

she bore him! — 
Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long 

fever gave him. 
Beneath those deep pathetic eyes which closed in death 

to save him. 

Thus] oh, not thus! no type of earth can image that 

awaking, 
Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs, round 

him breaking. 
Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body 

parted , 
But felt those eyes alone, and knew, — ''' My Saviour! 

not deserted!" 



152 cowper's grave. 

Deserted! Who hath dreamt that when the cross in 

darkness rested, 
Upon the Victim's hidden face no love was manifested? 
What frantic hands outstretched have e'er the atoning 

drops averted ■? 
What tears have washed them from the soul, that one 

should be deserted? 

Deserted! God could separate from His own essence 

rather; 
And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous 

Son and Father: 
Yea, once, Immanuel's orphaned cry His universe hath 

shaken — 
It went up single, echoless, "My God, I am forsaken!" 

It went up from the Holy's lips amid His lost creation, 
That, of the lost, no son should use those words of 

desolation! 
That earth's worst phrenzies, marring hope, should 

mar not hope's fruition. 
And I, on Cowper's grave, should see his rapture in a 

vision. 



CROWNED AND BURIED. 153 



CROWNED AND BURIED. 

Napoleon! — years ago, and that great word 
Compact of human breath in hate and dread 
And exultation, skied us overhead — 
An atmosphere whose lightning was the sword 
Scathing the cedars of the world, — drawn down 
In burnings, by the metal of a crown. 

Napoleon! — nations, while they cursed that name, 
Shook at their own curse; and while others bore 
Its sound, as of a trumpet, on before. 
Brass-fronted legions justified its fame; 
And dying men on trampled battle-sods 
Near their last silence uttered it for God's. 

Napoleon! — sages, with high foreheads drooped. 
Did use it for a problem; children small 
Leapt up to greet it, as at manhood's call; 
Priests blessed it from their altars overstooped 
By meek-eyed Christs; and widows with a moan 
Spake it, when questioned why they sat alone. 

That name consumed the silence of the snows 
In Alpine keeping, holy and cloud-hid; 
The mimic eagles dared what Nature's did, 
And over-rushed her mountainous repose 
In search of eyries: and the Egyptian river 
Mingled the same word with its grand "For ever" 



154 CROWNED AND BURIED. 

That name was shouted near the pyramidal 
Nilotic tombs, whose mummied habitants, 
Packed to humanity's significance. 
Motioned it back with stillness, — shouts as idle 
As hireling artists' work of myrrh and spice 
Which swathed last glories round the Ptolemies. 

The world's face changed to hear it; kingly men 

Came down in chidden babes' bewilderment 

From autocratic places, each content 

With sprinkled ashes for anointing: then 

The people laughed or wondered for the nonce, 

To see one throne a composite of thrones. 

Napoleon! — even the torrid vastitude 
Of India felt in throbbings of the air 
That name which scattered by disastrous blare 
All Europe's bound-lines, — drawn afresh in blood- 
Napoleon! — from the Russias west to Spain: 
And Austria trembled till ye heard her chain. 

And Germany was 'ware; and Italy 
Oblivious of old fames — her laurel-locked, 
High-ghosted Caesars passing uninvoked — 
Did crumble her own ruins with her knee. 
To serve a newer: ay! but Frenchmen cast 
A future from them nobler than her past: 

For verily though France augustly rose 

With that raised name, and did assume by such 

The purple of the world, none gave so much 

As she in purchase — to speak plain, in loss — 

Whose hands, toward freedom stretched, dropped 

paralyzed 
To wield a sword or fit an undersized 



CROWNED AND BURIED. 155 

King's crown to a great man's head. And though along 
Her Paris streets, did float on frequent streams 
Of triumph, pictured or emmarbled dreams 
Dreamt right by genius in a world gone wrong, — 
No dream of all so won was fair to see 
As the lost vision of her liberty. 

Napoleon! — 'twas a high name lifted high: 
It met at last God's thunder sent to clear 
Our compassing and covering atmosphere 
And open a clear sight beyond the sky 
Of supreme empire; this of earth's was done — 
And kings crept out again to feel the sun. 

The kings crept out — the peoples sat at home, 
And finding the long-invocated peace 
(A pall embroidered with worn images 
Of rights divine) too scant to cover doom 
Such as they suffered, cursed the corn that grew 
Rankly, to bitter bread, on Waterloo. 

A deep gloom centered in the deep repose; 
The nations stood up mute to count their dead: 
And he who owned the name which vibrated 
Through silence, — trusting to its noblest foes 
When earth was all too grey for chivalry, 
Died of their mercies 'mid the desert sea. 

O wild St. Plelen! very still she kept him, 
With a green willow for all pyramid. 
Which stirred a little if the low wind did, 
A little more, if pilgrims overwept him, 
Disparting the lithe boughs to see the clay 
Which seemed to cover his for judgment-day. 



156 CROWNED AND BURIED, 

Nay, not so long! France kept her old affection 

As deeply as the sepulchre the corse; 

Until, dilated by such lovers remorse 

To a new angel of the resurrection. 

She cried, "Behold, thou England! I would have 

The dead whereof thou wottest, from that grave." 

And England answered in the courtesy 
Which, ancient foes turned lovers, may befit, — 
"Take back thy dead! and when thou buriest it, 
Throw in all former strifes 'twixt thee and me." 
Amen, mine England! 'tis a courteous claim: 
But ask a little room too — for thy shame! 

Because it was not well, it was not well. 
Nor tuneful with thy lofty-chanted part 
Among the Oceanides, — that Heart 
To bind and bare and vex with vulture fell. 
I would, my noble England, men might seek 
All crimson stains upon thy breast — not cheek! 

I would that hostile fleets had scarred Torbay, 
Instead of the lone ship which waited moored 
Until thy princely purpose was assured. 
Then left a shadow, not to pass away — 
Not for to-night's moon, nor to-morrow's sun: 
Green watching hills, ye witnessed what was done! 

But since it was done, — in sepulchral dust 
We fain would pay back something of our debt 
To France, if not to honour, and forget 
How through much fear we falsified the trust 
Of a fallen foe and exile. We return 
Orestes to Electra — in his urn. 



CROWNED AND BURIED. 157 

A little urn — a little dust inside, 

Which once outbalanced the large earth, albeit 

To-day a four-years child might carry it 

Sleek-browed and smiling, "Let the burden 'bide!" 

Orestes to Electra! — O fair town 

Of Paris, how the wild tears will run down 

And run back in the chariot-marks of time. 

When all the people shall come forth to meet 

The passive victor, death-still in the street 

He rode through 'mid the shouting and bell-chime 

And martial music, under eagles which 

Dyed their rapacious beaks at Austerlitz! 

Napoleon! he hath come again, borne home 

Upon the popular ebbing heart, — a sea 

Which gathers its own wrecks perpetually. 

Majestically moaning. Give him room! 

Room for the dead in Paris! welcome solemn 

And grave-deep, 'neath the cannon-moulded column! 

There, weapon spent and warrior spent may rest 

From roar of fields, — provided Jupiter 

Dare trust Saturnus to lie down so near 

His bolts! — and this he may: for, dispossessed 

Of any godship lies the godlike arm — 

The goat, Jove sucked, as likely to do harm. 

And yet . . . Napoleon! — the recovered name 
Shakes the old casements of the world; and we 
Look out upon the passing pageantry. 
Attesting that the Dead makes good his claim 
To a French grave, — another kingdom won, 
The last, of few spans — by Napoleon. 



158 CROWNED AND BURIED. 

Blood fell like dew beneath his sunrise — sooth! 
But glittered dew-like in the covenanted 
Meridian light. He was a despot — granted! 
But the aviog of his autocratic mouth 
Said yea i' the people's French; he magnified 
The image of the freedom he denied: 

And if they asked for rights, he made reply 

"Ye have my glory!" — and so, drawing round them 

His ample purple, glorified and bound them 

In an embrace that seemed identity. 

He ruled them like a tyrant — true! but none 

Were ruled like slaves: each felt Napoleon. 

I do not praise this man: the man was flawed 
For Adam — much more, Christ! his knee unbent, 
His hand unclean, his aspiration pent 
Within a sword-sweep — pshaw! — but since he had 
The genius to be loved, why let him have 
The justice to be honoured in his grave. 

I think this nation's tears thus poured together, 
Better than shouts. I think this funeral 
Grander than crownings, though a Pope bless all. 
I think this grave stronger than thrones. But whether 
The crowned Napoleon or the buried clay 
Be worthier, I discern not: angels may. 



A RHAPSODY OF LIFE's PROGRESS. 1 59 



A RHAPSODY OF LIFE'S PROGRESS. 

We are borne into life — it is sweet, it is strange. 
We lie still on the knee of a mild Mystery 

Which smiles with a change; 
But we doubt not of changes, we know not of spaces, 
The heavens seem as near as our own mother's face is, 
And we think we could touch all the stars that we see; 
And the milk of our mother is white on our mouth; 
And, with small childish hands, we are turning around 
The apple of Life which another has found; 
It is warm with our touch, not with sun of the south, 
And we count, as we turn it, the red side for four. 
O Life, O Beyond, 
Thou art sweet, thou art strange evermore! 

Then all things look strange in the pure golden aether; 
We walk through the gardens with hands linked together. 

And the lilies look large as the trees; 
And as loud as the birds, sing the bloom-loving bees. 
And the birds sing like angels, so mystical-fine. 
And the cedars are brushing the archangels' feet, 
And time is eternity, love is divine. 

And the world is complete. 
Now, God bless the child, — father, mother, respond! 

O Life, O Beyond, 
Thou art strange, thou art sweet. 

Then we leap on the earth with the armour of youth, 
And the earth rings again; 



l6o A RHAPSODY OF LIFERS PROGRESS. 

And we breathe out, "O beauty!" we cry out, "O truth!'* 
And the bloom of our lips drops with wine, 
And our blood runs amazed 'neath the calm hyaline; 
The earth cleaves to the foot, the sun bums to the 

brain, — 
What is this exultation? and what this despair? — 
The strong pleasure is smiting the nerves into pain. 
And we drop from the Fair as we climb to the Fair, 

And we lie in a trance at its feet; 
And the breath of an angel cold-piercing the air 

Breathes fresh on our faces in swoon^ 
And we think him so near he is this side the sun. 
And we wake to a whisper self-murmured and fond, 

O Life, O Beyond, 
Thou art strange, thou art sweet! 

And the winds and the waters in pastoral measures 
Go winding around us, with roll upon roll, 
Till the soul lies within in a circle of pleasures 

Which hideth the soul: 
And we run with the stag, and we leap with the horse. 
And we swim with the fish through the broad water- 
course, 
And we strike with the falcon, and hunt with the hound, 
And the joy which is in us flies out by a wound. 
And we shout so aloud, "We exult, we rejoice," 
That we lose the low moan of our brothers around : 
And we shout so adeep down creation's profound, 

We are deaf to God's voice. 
And we bind the rose-garland on forehead and ears 

Yet we are not ashamed. 
And the dew of the roses that runneth unblamed 

Down our cheeks, is not taken for tears. 



A RHAPSODY OF LIFE's PROGRESS. l6l 

Help us, God! trust us, man, love us, woman! "I hold 
Thy small head in my hands, — with its grapelets of gold 
Growing bright through my fingers, — like altar for oath, 
'Neath the vast golden spaces like witnessing faces 
That watch the eternity strong in the troth — 

I love thee, I leave thee, 

Live for thee, die for thee! 

I prove thee, deceive thee, 

Undo evermore thee! 
Help me, God! slay me, man! — one is mourning for both. 
And we stand up though young near the funeral-sheet 
Which covers old Caesar and old Pharamond, 
And death is so nigh us, life cools from its heat. 

O Life, O Beyond, 

Art thou fair, art thou sweet? 

Then we act to a purpose, we spring up erect: 
We will tame the wild mouths of the wilderness-steeds. 
We will plough up the deep in the ships double-decked. 
We will build the great cities, and do the great deeds. 
Strike the steel upon steel, strike the soul upon soul. 
Strike the dole on the weal, overcoming the dole. 
Let the cloud meet the cloud in a grand thunder-roll ! 
"While the eagle of Thought rides the tempest in scorn. 
Who cares if the lightning is burning the corn? 
Let us sit on the thrones 

In a purple sublimity. 
And grind down men's bones 

To a pale unanimity. 
Speed me, God! serve me, man! I am God over men; 
When I speak in my cloud, none shall answer again; 
'Neath the stripe and the bond. 

Lie and mourn at my feet!" 

Elizabeth Brcnvnlng. II 



1 62 A RHAPSODY OF LIFERS PROGRESS. 

O Life, O Beyond, 
Thou art strange, thou art sweet! 

Then we grow into thought, and with inward ascensions 

Touch the bounds of our Being. 
We He in the dark here, swathed doubly around 
With our sensual relations and social conventions, 
Yet are Vare of a sight, yet are 'ware of a sound 

Beyond Hearing and Seeing, — • 
Are aware that a Hades rolls deep on all sides 

With its infinite tides 
About and above us, — until the strong arch 
Of our life creaks and bends as if ready for falling, 
And through the dim rolling we hear the sweet calling 
Of spirits that speak in a soft under-tongue 

The sense of the mystical march: 
And we cry to them softly, "Come nearer, come nearer, 
And lift up the lap of this dark, and speak clearer, 

And teach us the song that ye sung!" 
And we smile in our thought as they answer or no. 
For to dream of a sweetness is sweet as to know. 

Wonders breathe in our face 
And we ask not their name; 
Love takes all the blame 

Of the world's prison-place. 
And we sing back the songs as we guess them, aloud^ 
And we send up the lark of our music that cuts 

Untired through the cloud 
To beat with its wings at the lattice Heaven shuts; 
Yet the angels look down and the mortals look up 

As the little wings beat, 
And the poet is blessed with their pity or hope. 
'Twixt the heavens and the earth can a poet despond? 



A RHAPSODY OF LIFE'S PROGRESS. 1 63 

O Life, O Beyond, 
Thou art strange, thou art sweet! 

Then we wring from our souls their applicative strength, 
And bend to the cord the strong bow of our ken, 
And bringing our lives to the level of others 
Hold the cup we have filled, to their uses at length. 
"Help me, God! love me, man! I am man among men. 

And my life is a pledge 

Of the ease of another's!" 
From the fire and the water we drive out the steam 
With a rush and a roar and the speed of a dream; 
And the car without horses, the car without wings, 

Roars onward and flies 

On its grey iron edge 
'Neath the heat of a Thought sitting still in our eyes: 
And our hand knots in air, with the bridge that it 

flings. 
Two peaks far disruptured by ocean and skies. 
And, lifting a fold of the smooth-flowing Thames, 
Draws under the world with its turmoils and pothers, 
While the swans float on softly, untouched in their calms, 
By humanity's hum at the root of the springs. 
And with reachings of Thought we reach down to the 
deeps 

Of the souls of our brothers. 
We teach them full words with our slow-moving lips, 
"God," "Liberty," "Truth,"— which they hearken and 

think 
And work into harmony, link upon link. 
Till the silver meets round the earth gelid and dense, 
Shedding sparks of electric responding intense 

On the dark of eclipse. 

II* 



164 A RHAPSODY OF LIFE'S PROGRESS. 

Then we hear through the silence and glory afar, 

As from shores of a star 
In aphelion, the new generations that cry 
Disenthralled by our voice to harmonious reply, 
"God,'' "Liberty," "Truth!" 
We are glorious forsooth. 
And our name has a seat, 
Though the shroud should be donned. 

O Life, O Beyond, 
Thou art strange, thou art sweet 1 



Help me, God! help me, man! I am low, I am weak, 
Death loosens my sinews and creeps in my veins, 
My body is cleft by these wedges of pains 

From my spirit's serene, 
And I feel the exteme and insensate creep in 

On my organized clay; 

I sob not, nor shriek. 

Yet I faint fast away: 
I am strong in the spirit, — deep-thoughted, clear-eyed, — 
I could walk, step for step, with an angel beside, 
On the heaven-heights of truth. 
Oh, the soul keeps its youth! 
But the body faints sore, it is tired in the race, 
It sinks from the chariot ere reaching the goal, 

It is weak, it is cold, 

The rein drops from its hold. 
It sinks back, with the death in its face. 

On, chariot! on, soul! 

Ye are all the more fleet — 

Be alone at the goal 

Of the strange and the sweet! 



THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 1 65 

Love US, God! love us, man! we believe, we achieve: 
Let us love, let us live, 
For the acts correspond; 
We are glorious, and die: 
And again on the knee of a mild Mystery 
That smiles with a change. 
Here we lie. 
O Death, O Beyond, 
Thou art sweet, thou art strange! 



THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, 

Ere the sorrow comes with years'? 
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers. 

And f/iaf cannot stop their tears. 
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows. 

The young birds are chirping in the nest, 
The young fawns are playing with the shadows, 

The young flowers are blowing toward the west — • 
But the young, young children, O my brothers, 

They are weeping bitterly! 
They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 

In the country of the free. 

Do you question the young children in the sorrow 

Why their tears are falling so*? 
The old man may weep for his to-morrow 

Which is lost in Long Ago; 



X66 THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 

The old tree is leafless in the forest, 

The old year is ending in the frost, 
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest. 

The old hope is hardest to be lost: 
But the young, young children, O my brothers, 

Do you ask them why they stand 
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers, 
In our happy Fatherland*^ 

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, 

And their looks are sad to see. 
For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses 

Down the cheeks of infancy; 
"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary," 

"Our young feet," they say, "are very weak; 
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary — 

Our grave-rest is very far to seek: 
Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children, 

For the outside earth is cold. 
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering. 

And the graves are for the old." 

"True," say the children, "it may happen 

That we die before our time: 
Little Alice died last year, her grave is shapen 

Like a snowball, in the rime. 
We looked into the pit prepared to take her: 

Was no room for any work in the close clay! 
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, 

Crying, ^Get up, little Alice! it is day.' 
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, 

With your ear down, little Alice never cries; 



THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 1 67 

Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her. 

For the smile has time for growing in her eyes: 
And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in 

The shroud by the kirk-chime." 
"It is good when it happens," say the children, 

"That we die before our time." 



Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking 

Death in life, as best to have: 
They are binding up their hearts away from breaking, 

With a cerement from the grave. 
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city, 

Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do; 
Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty, 

Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through! 
But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows 

Like our weeds anear the mine] 
Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, 

From your pleasures fair and fine! 

"For oh," say the children, "we are weary. 

And we cannot run or leap; 
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 

To drop down in them and sleep. 
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping. 

We fall upon our faces, trying to go; 
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, 

The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. 
For, all day, we drag our burden tiring 

Through the coal-dark, underground; 
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron 

In the factories, round and round* 



1 68 THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN, 

"For all day, the wheels are droning, turning; 

Their wind comes in our faces, 
Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning. 

And the walls turn in their places: 
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling, 

Turns the long light that drops adown the wall. 
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling 
All are turning, all the day, and we with all. 
And all day, the iron wheels are droning. 

And sometimes we could pray, 
^O ye wheels,' (breaking out in a mad moaning) 

'Stop! be silent for to-day!'" 

Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing 

For a moment, mouth to mouth! 
Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing 

Of their tender human youth! 
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion 
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals: 
Let them prove their living souls against the notion 

That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! 
Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward. 
Grinding life down from its mark; 
And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, 
Spin on blindly in the dark. 

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers. 

To look up to Him and pray; 
So the blessed One who blesseth all the others. 

Will bless them another day. 
They answer, "Who is God that He should hear us, 
While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred "^ 



THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 1 69 

When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us 

Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word. 
And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding) 

Strangers speaking at the door: 
Is it likely God, with angels singing round him, 
Hears our weeping any more? 

"Two words, indeed, of praying we remember, 

And at midnighf s hour of harm, 
^Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber. 

We say softly for a charm. 
We know no other words except ^Our Father,' 

And we think that, in some pause of angels' song, 
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather. 
And hold both within His right hand which is strong. 
^Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely 

(For they call Him good and mild) 
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, 

^Come and rest with me, my child.'" 

"But, no!" say the children, weeping faster, 

"He is speechless as a stone: 
And they tell us, of His image is the master 

Who commands us to work on. 
Go to!" say the children, — "up in heaven. 

Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. 
Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving: 

We look up for God, but tears have made us blind." 
Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, 

O my brothers, what ye preach? 
For God's possible is taught by His world's loving, 

And the children doubt of each. 



170 THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN. 

And well may the children weep before you! 

They are weary ere they run; 
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory 

Which is brighter than the sun. 
They know the grief of man, without its wisdom; 

They sink in man's despair, without its calm; 
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom, 

Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm: 
Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly 

The harvest of its memories cannot reap, — 
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly. 

Let them weep! let them weep! 

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, 

And their look is dread to see. 
For they mind you of their angels in high places. 

With eyes turned on Deity. 
"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation. 

Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's hearty- 
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, 

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? 
Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper. 

And your purple shows your path! 
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper 

Than the strong man in his wrath." 



A SONG FOR THE RAGGED SCHOOLS OF LONDON. 17I 



A SONG FOR THE RAGGED SCHOOLS OF 
LONDON. 

WRITTEN IN ROME. 

I AM listening here in Rome. 

"England ^s strong," say many speakers, 
"If she winks, the Czar must come, 

Prow and topsail, to the breakers." 

"England 's rich in coal and oak," 

Adds a Roman, getting moody, 
"If she shakes a travelling cloak, 

Down our Appian roll the scudi." 

"England 's righteous," they rejoin, 
"Who shall grudge her exaltations. 

When her wealth of golden coin 
Works the welfare of the nations?" 

I am listening here in Rome. 

Over Alps a voice is sweeping — 
"England 's cruel! save us some 

Of these victims in her keeping!" 

As the cry beneath the wheel 

Of an old triumphal Roman 
Cleft the people's shouts like steel, 

While the show was spoilt for no man, 



172 A SONG FOR THE 

Comes that voice. Let others shout, 
Other poets praise my land here: 

I am sadly sitting out, 

Praying, "God forgive her grandeur/'' 

Shall we boast of empire, where 
Time with ruin sits commissioned? 

In God's liberal blue air 

Peter's dome itself looks wizened; 

And the mountains, in disdain. 

Gather back their lights of opal 
From the dumb, despondent plain, 

Heaped with jawbones of a people. 

Lordly English, think it o'er, 

Caesar's doing is all undone! 
You have cannons on your shore, 

And free parliaments in London, 

Princes' parks, and merchants' homes. 
Tents for soldiers, ships for seamen,-— 

Ay, but ruins worse than Rome's 
In your pauper men and women. 

Women leering through the gas, 

(Just such bosoms used to nurse you) 

Men, turned wolves by famine — pass! 

Those can speak themselves, and curse you. 

But these others — children small. 

Spilt like blots about the city, 
Quay, and street, and palace-wall — 

Take them up into your pity! 



RAGGED SCHOOLS OF LONDON. I 73 

Ragged children with bare feet, 

Whom the angels in white raiment 
Know the names of, to repeat 

When they come on you for payment. 

Ragged children, hungry-eyed, 

Huddled up out of the coldness 
On your doorsteps, side by side. 

Till your footman damns their boldness. 

In the alleys, in the squares, 

Begging, lying little rebels 
In the noisy thoroughfares. 

Struggling on with piteous trebles. 

Patient children — think what pain 

Makes a young child patient — ponder! 

Wronged too commonly to strain 
After right, or wish, or wonder. 

Wicked children, with peaked chins, 

And old foreheads! there are many 
With no pleasures except sins. 

Gambling with a stolen penny. 

Sickly children, that whine low 

To themselves and not their mothers, 

From mere habit, — never so 

Hoping help or care from others. 

Healthy children, with those blue 

English eyes, fresh from their Maker, 

Fierce and ravenous, staring through 
At the brown loaves of the baker. 



174 A SONG FOR THE 

I am listening here in Rome, 
And the Romans are confessing, 

"English children pass in bloom 
All the prettiest made for blessing. 

^^AngU angeli!^^ (resumed 

From the mediaeval story) 
"Such rose angelhoods, emplumed 

In such ringlets of pure glory!" 

Can we smooth down the bright hair, 
O my sisters, calm, unthrilled in 

Our hearts' pulses? Can we bear 
The sweet looks of our own children, 

While those others, lean and small. 

Scurf and mildew of the city. 
Spot our streets, convict us all 

Till we take them into pityl 

"Is it our fault?" you reply, 
"When, throughout civilization. 

Every nation's empery 
Is asserted by starvation? 

"All these mouths we cannot feed. 
And we cannot clothe these bodies." 

Well, if man 's so hard indeed, 

Let them learn at least what God is! 

Little outcasts from life's fold, 

The grave's hope they may be joined in, 
By Christ's covenant consoled 

For our social contract's grinding. 



RAGGED SCHOOLS OF LONDON. 175 

If no better can be done, 

Let us do but this, — endeavour 
That the sun behind the sun 

Shine upon them while they shiver! 

On the dismal London flags. 

Through the cruel social juggle, 
Put a thought beneath their rags 

To ennoble the hearths struggle. 

O my sisters! not so much 

Are we asked for — not a blossom 
From our children's nosegay, such 

As we gave it from our bosom, — 

Not the milk left in their cup. 

Not the lamp while they are sleeping, 

Not the little cloak hung up 

While the coat's in daily keeping, — 

But a place in Ragged Schools, 

Where the outcasts may to-morrow 
Learn by gentle words and rules 

Just the uses of their sorrow. 

O my sisters! children small, 

Blue-eyed, wailing through the city — 

Our own babes cry in them all, 
Let us take them into pity! 



176 A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. 



A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE, 

A ROSE once grew within 

A garden April-green, 
In her loneness, in her loneness, 
And the fairer for that oneness. 

A white rose delicate 
On a tall bough and straight: 
Early comer, early comer, 
Never waiting for the summer. 

Her pretty gestes did win 
South winds to let her in, 
In her loneness, in her loneness. 
All the fairer for that oneness. 

"For if I wait," said she, 

"Till time for roses be. 
For the moss-rose and the musk-rose 
Maiden-blush and royal dusk-rose. 

"What glory then for me 

In such a company? — 
Roses plenty, roses plenty. 
And one nightingale for twenty! 

"Nay, let me in," said she 

"Before the rest are free. 
In my loneness, in my loneness, 
All the fairer for that oneness. 



A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. 177 

"For I would lonely stand 

Uplifting my white hand^ 
On a mission, on a mission, 
To declare the coming vision. 

"Upon which lifted sign, 

What worship will be mine! 
What addressing, what caressing, 
And what thanks and praise and blessing! 

"A windlike joy will rush 

Through every tree and bush, 
Bending softly in affection 
And spontaneous benediction. 

"Insects that only may 

Live in a sunbright ray. 
To my whiteness, to my whiteness, 
Shall be drawn as to a brightness, — 

"And every moth and bee, 

Approach me reverently, 
Wheeling o'er me, wheeling o'er me, 
Coronals of motioned glory. 

"Three larks shall leave a cloud, 

To my whiter beauty vowed, 
Singing gladly all the moontide. 
Never waiting for the suntide. 

"Ten nightingales shall flee 

Their woods for love of me. 
Singing sadly all the suntide, 
Never waiting for the moontide. 

Elizabeth Broivnin^, 12 



178 A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. 

"I ween the very skies, 
Will look down with surprise, 
When below on earth they see me 
With my starry aspect dreamy. 

"And earth will call her flowers 
To hasten out of doors, 
By their curtsies and sweet-smelling, 
To give grace to my foretelling." 

So praying did she win 
South winds to let her in, 
In her loneness, in her loneness, 
And the fairer for that oneness. 

But ah, — alas for her! 

No thing did minister 
To her praises, to her praises, 
More than might unto a daisy's. 

No tree nor bush was seen 
To boast a perfect green, 
Scarcely having, scarcely having 
One leaf broad enough for waving. 

The little flies did crawl 
Along the southern wall, 
Faintly shifting, faintly shifting 
Wings scarce long enough for lifting. 

The lark, too high or low, 
I ween, did miss her so. 
With his nest down in the gorses, 
And his song in the star-courses. 



A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. 1 79 

The nightingale did please 

To loiter beyond seas: 
Guess him in the Happy islands, 
Learning music from the silence! 

Only the bee, forsooth. 

Came in the place of both, 
Doing honour, doing honour 
To the honey-dews upon her. 

The skies looked coldly down 

As on a royal crown; 
Then with drop for drop, at leisure, 
They began to rain for pleasure. 

Whereat the earth did seem 

To waken from a dream. 
Winter-frozen, winter-frozen. 
Her unquiet eyes unclosing — 

Said to the Rose, "Ha, snow! 

And art thou fallen so? 
Thou, who wast enthroned stately 
AH along my mountains lately? 

"Holla, thou world-wide snow! 

And art thou wasted so. 
With a little bough to catch thee. 
And a little bee to watch thee?'' 

— Poor Rose, to be misknown! 

Would she had ne'er been blown. 
In her loneness, in her loneness, 
All the sadder for that oneness! 



l8o A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. 

Some word she tried to say, 
Some no ... ah y wellaway! 
But the passion did overcome her, 
And the fair frail leaves dropped from her. 

— Dropped from her, fair and mute. 

Close to a poef s foot. 
Who beheld them, smiling slowly. 
As at something sad yet holy, — 

Said, "Verily and thus 

It chances too with us 
Poets, singing sweetest snatches 
While that deaf men keep the watches: 

"Vaunting to come before 

Our own age evermore, 
In a loneness, in a loneness. 
And the nobler for that oneness. 

"Holy in voice and heart. 

To high ends, set apart: 
All unmated, all unmated, 
Just because so consecrated. 

"But if alone we be. 

Where is our empery? 
And if none can reach our stature, 
Who can mete our lofty nature "2 

"What bell will yield a tone, 

Swung in the air alone? 
If no brazen clapper bringing, 
Who can hear the chimed ringing? 



A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. lb I 

"What angel but would seem 

To sensual eyes, ghost-dim 1 
And without assimilation, 
Pain is inter-penetration. 

"And thus, what can we do, 

Poor rose and poet too, 
Who both antedate our mission 
In an unprepared season? 

"Drop, leaf! be silent, song! 

Cold things we come among: 
We must warm them, we must warm them, 
Ere we ever hope to charm them. 

"Howbeit" (here his face 

Lightened around the place. 
So to mark the outward turning 
Of its spirit's inward burning) 

"Something it is, to hold 

In God's worlds manifold, 
First revealed to creature- duty, 
Some new form of His mild Beauty. 

"Whether that form respect 

The sense or intellect. 
Holy be, in mood or meadow. 
The Chief Beauty's sign and shadow! 

"Holy, in me and thee. 

Rose fallen from the tree, — 
Though the world stand dumb around us. 
All unable to expound us. 



1 82 A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. 

"Though none us deign to bless, 
Blessed are we, natheless; 
Blessed still and consecrated 
In that, rose, we were created. 

"Oh, shame to poefs lays 
Sung for the dole of praise,^ — 

Hoarsely sung upon the highway 

With that obolum da mihi! 

"Shame, shame to poefs soul 
Pining for such a dole. 
When Heaven-chosen to inherit 
The high throne of a chief spirit! 

"Sit still upon your thrones, 

O ye poetic ones! 
And if, sooth, the world decry you. 
Let it pass unchallenged by you. 

"Ye to yourselves suffice. 

Without its flatteries. 
Self-contentedly approve you 
Unto Him who sits above you, — 

"In prayers, that upward mount 
Like to a fair-sunned fount 
Which, in gushing back upon you, 
Hath an upper music won you, — 

"In faith, that still perceives 
No rose can shed her leaves. 
Far less, poet fall from mission, 
With an unfulfilled fruition, — 



A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE. 1 83 

"In hope, that apprehends 

An end beyond these ends, 
And great uses rendered duly 
By the meanest song sung truly, — 

"In thanks, for all the good 

By poets understood. 
For the sound of seraphs moving 
Down the hidden depths of loving,— 

"For sights of things away 

Through fissures of the clay, 
Promised things which shall be given 
And sung over, up in Heaven, — 

"For life, so lovely vain. 

For death, which breaks the chain, 

For this sense of present sweetness, 

And this yearning to completeness!'' 



i/ I 



184 WINE OF CYPRUS. 



WINE OF CYPRUS. 

GIVEN TO ME BY H. S. BOYD, AUTHOR OF ''SELECT PASSAGES 
FROM THE GREEK FATHERS," ETC., 

TO WHOM THESE STANZAS ARE ADDRESSED. 

If old Bacchus were the speaker 

He would tell you with a sigh, 
Of the Cyprus in this beaker 

I am sipping like a fly, — 
Like a fly or gnat on Ida 

At the hour of goblet-pledge, 
By Queen Juno brushed aside. 

Full white arm-sweep, from the edge. 

Sooth, the drinking should be ampler 

When the drink is so divine, 
And some deep-mouthed Greek exemplar 

Would become your Cyprus wine: 
Cyclops' mouth might plunge aright in, 

While his one eye over-leered, 
Nor too large were mouth of Titan 

Drinking rivers down his beard. 

Pan might dip his head so deep in. 

That his ears alone pricked out, 
Fauns around him pressing, leaping 

Each one pointing to his throat; 



WINE OF CYPRUS. 

While the Naiads, like Bacchantes, 
Wild, with urns thrown out to waste, 

Cry, "O earth, that thou wouldst grant us 
Springs to keep, of such a taste!" 

But for me, I am not worthy 

After gods and Greeks to drink, 
And my lips are pale and earthy 

To go bathing from this brink: 
Since you heard them speak the last time, 

They have faded from their blooms. 
And the laughter of my pastime 

Has learnt silence at the tombs. 



Ah, my friend! the antique drinkers 

Crowned the cup and crowned the brow. 
Can I answer the old thinkers 

In the forms they thought of, now*? 
Who will fetch from garden-closes 

Some new garlands while I speak. 
That the forehead, crowned with roses. 

May strike scarlet down the cheek? 

Do not mock me! with my mortal. 

Suits no wreath again, indeed; 
I am sad-voiced as the turtle 

Which Anacreon used to feed: 
Yet as that same bird demurely 

Wet her beak in cup of his. 
So, without a garland, surely 

I may touch the brim of this. 



1 86 WINE OF CYPRUS. 

Go, — let others praise the Chian! 

This is soft as Muses' string, 
This is tawny as Rhea's lion, 

This is rapid as his spring, 
Bright as Paphia's eyes e'er met us, 

Light as ever trod her feet; 
And the brown bees of Hymettus 

Make their honey not so sweet. 

Very copious are my praises, 

Though I sip it like a fly! 
Ah — but, sipping, — times and places 

Change before me suddenly: 
As Ulysses' old libation 

Drew the ghosts from every part. 
So your Cyprus wine, dear Grecian, 

Stirs the Hades of my heart. 



And I think of those long mornings 

Which my thought goes far to seek. 
When, betwixt the folio's turnings, 

Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek: 
Past the pane the mountain spreading, 

Swept the sheep's-bells tinkling noise. 
While a girlish voice was reading. 

Somewhat low for ais and ois. 



Then, what golden hours were for us! 

While we sat together there. 
How the white vests of the chorus 

Seemed to wave up a live air! 



WINE OF CYPRUS. 1 87 

How the cothurns trod majestic 

Down the deep iambic lines, 
And the rolling anapaestic 

Curled like vapour over shrines! 

Oh, our -^schylus, the thunderous, 

How he drove the bolted breath 
Through the cloud, to wedge it ponderous 

In the gnarled oak beneath! 
Oh, our Sophocles, the royal, 

Who was born to monarch's place, 
.And who made the whole world loyal. 

Less by kingly power than grace! 

Our Euripides, the human, 

With his droppings of warm tears. 
And his touches of things common 

Till they rose to touch the spheres! 
Our Theocritus, our Bion, 

And our Pindar's shining goals! — 
These were cup-bearers undying. 

Of the wine that's meant for souls. 



And my Plato, the divine one. 

If men know the gods aright 
By their motions as they shine on 

With a glorious trail of light! 
And your noble Christian bishops. 

Who mouthed grandly the last Greek! 
Though the sponges on their hyssops 

Were distent with wine — too weak. 



WINE OF CYPRUS. 

Yet, your Chrysostom, you praised him 

As a liberal mouth of gold; 
And your Basil, you upraised him 

To the height of speakers old: 
And we both praised Heliodorus 

For his secret of pure lies, — 
Who forged first his linked stories 

In the heat of lady's eyes. 

And we both praised your Synesius 

For the fire shot up his odes, 
Though the Church was scarce propitious 

As he whistled dogs and gods. 
And we both praised Nazianzen 

For the fervid heart and speech: 
Only I eschewed his glancing 

At the lyre hung out of reach. 

Do you mind that deed of At^ 

Which you bound me to so fast, — 
Reading "De Virginitate" 

From the first line to the last? 
How I said at ending, solemn 

As I turned and looked at you. 
That St. Simeon on the column 

Had had somewhat less to do? 



For we sometimes gently wrangled, 

Very gently, be it said, 
Since our thoughts were disentangled 

By no breaking of the thread: 



WINE OF CYPRUS. 1 89 

And I charged you with extortions 

On the nobler fames of old — 
Ay, and sometimes thought your Persons 

Stained the purple they would fold. 



For the rest — a mystic moaning, 

Kept Cassandra at the gate, 
With wild eyes the vision shone in, 

And wide nostrils scenting fate. 
And Prometheus, bound in passion 

By brute Force to the blind stone. 
Showed us looks of invocation 

Turned to ocean and the sun. 



And Medea we saw burning 

At her nature's planted stake: 
And proud GEdipus fate-scorning 

While the cloud came on to break — 
While the cloud came on slow, slower. 

Till he stood discrowned, resigned, — 
But the reader's voice dropped lower 

When the poet called him blind. 

Ah, my gossip! you were older. 

And more learned, and a man; 
Yet that shadow, the enfolder 

Of your quiet eyelids, ran 
Both our spirits to one level: 

And I turned from hill and lea 
And the summer-sun's green revel. 

To your eyes that could not see. 



1 90 WINK OF cvrKus. 

Mow Christ bless you with the one light 

Which goes shining night and day! 
]May the flowers which grow in sunlight 

Shed their fragrance in your way I 
Is it not right to remember 

All your kindness, friend of mine, 
When we two sat in tlie chamber, 

And the poets poured us wine? 

So, to come back to the drinking 

Of this Cyprus, — it is well. 
But those memories, to my thinking. 

Make a better ocnomel; 
And whoever be the speaker, 

None can murmur with a sigh 
That, in drinking from that beaker, 

I am sipping like a fly. 



XH£ CYCLOPS. 191 



THE CYCLOPS. 

(Theocritus, Idyll XI). 

And so an easier life our Cyclops drew, 
The ancient Polyphemus, who in youth 

Loved Galatea while the manhood grew 

Ado\\Ti his cheeks and darkened round his mouth. 

No jot he cared for apples, olives, roses; 

Love made him mad: the whole world was neglected, 

The very sheep went backward to their closes 
From out the fair green pastures, self-directed. 
And singing Galatea, thus, he wore 
The sunrise down along the weedy shore. 

And pined alone, and felt the cruel wound 
Beneath his heart, which Cypris' arrow bore, 

With a deep pang; but, so, the cure was found; 
And sitting on a lofty rock he cast 
His eyes upon the sea, and sang at last: — 

^•O whitest Galatea, can it be 

That thou shouldst spurn me off who love thee so] 
MoTQ white than curds, my girl, thou art to see, 
More meek than lambs, more full of leaping glee 

Than kids, and brighter than the early glow 



192 , THE CYCLOPS. 

On grapes that swell to ripen, — sour like thee! 
Thou comest to me with the fragrant sleep, 

And with the fragrant sleep thou goest from me; 
Thou fliest . . fliest, as a frightened sheep 

Flies the grey wolf! — yet Love did overcome me, 
So long; — I loved thee, maiden, first of all 

When down the hills (my mother fast beside thee) 
I saw thee stray to pluck the summer-fall 

Of hyacinth bells, and went myself to guide thee: 
And since my eyes have seen thee, they can leave 
thee 

No more, from that day's light! But thou . . by Zeus, 
Thou wilt not care for that^ to let it grieve thee! 

I know thee, fair one, why thou springest loose 
From my arm round thee. Why? I tell thee. Dear! 

One shaggy eyebrow draws its smudging road 
Straight through my ample front, from ear to ear, — 

One eye roils underneath; and yawning, broad 
Flat nostrils feel the bulging lips too near. 
Yet . . ho, ho! — /, — whatever I appear, — 

Do feed a thousand oxen! When I have done, 
I milk the cows, and drink the milk thafs best! 

I lack no cheese, while summer keeps the sun; 
And after, in the cold, it's ready prest! 

And then, I know to sing, as there is none 
Of all the Cyclops can, . . a song of thee, 
Sweet apple of my soul, on love's fair tree, 
And of myself who love thee . . till the west 
Forgets the light, and all but I have rest. 
I feed for thee, besides, eleven fair does. 

And all in fawn; and four tame whelps of bears. 
Come to me, Sweet! thou shalt have all of those 

In change for love! I will not halve the shares. 



THE CYCLOPS. 193 

Leave the blue sea, with pure white arms extended 

To the dry shore; and, in my cave's recess, 
Thou shalt be gladder for the noonlight ended, — 

For here be laurels, spiral cypresses, 
Dark ivy, and a vine whose leaves enfold 
Most luscious grapes; and here is water cold, 

The wooded ^tna pours down through the trees 
From the white snows, — which gods were scarce too bold 

To drink in turn with nectar. Who with these 

Would choose the salt wave of the lukewarm seas'? 
Nay, look on me! If I am hairy and rough, 

I have an oak's heart in me; there's a fire 
In these grey ashes which burns hot enough; 

And when I burn for fhee, I grudge the pyre 
No fuel . . not my soul, nor this one eye, — 
Most precious thing I have, because thereby 
I see thee, Fairest! Out, alas! I wish 
My mother had borne me finned like a fish. 
That I might plunge down in the ocean near thee. 

And kiss thy glittering hand between the weeds, 
If still thy face were turned; and I would bear thee 

Each lily white, and poppy fair that bleeds 
Its red heart down its leaves! — one gift, for hours 

Of summer, — one, for winter; since, to cheer thee, 
I could not bring at once all kinds of flowers. 
Even now, girl, now, I fain would learn to swim. 

If stranger in a ship sailed nigh, I wis, — 

That I may know how sweet a thing it is 
To live down with you, in the deep and dim! 
Come up, O Galatea, from the ocean. 

And having come, forget again to go! 
As I, who sing out here my heart's emotion. 

Could sit for ever. Come up from below! 

EUza-heih BrozvKing. 13 



194 THE CYCLOPS. 

Come, keep my flocks beside me, milk my kine, — 

Come, press my cheese, distrain my whey and curd! 
Ah, mother! she alone . . that mother of mine . . 

Did wrong me sore! I blame her! — Not a word 
Of kindly intercession did she address 
Thine ear with for my sake; and nevertheless 

She saw me wasting, wasting, day by day; 

Both head and feet were aching, I will say. 
All sick for grief, as I myself was sick. 

O Cyclops, Cyclops, whither hast thou sent 

Thy soul on fluttering wings? If thou wert bent 
On turning bowls, or pulling green and thick 

The sprouts to give thy lambkins, — thou wouldst 
make thee 

A wiser Cyclops than for what we take thee. 
Milk dry the present! Why pursue too quick 
That future which is fugitive aright? 

Thy Galatea thou shalt haply find, — 

Or else a maiden fairer and more kind; 
For many girls do call me through the night. 

And, as they call, do laugh out silverly. 

/, too, am something in the world, I see!" 

While thus the Cyclops love and lambs did fold, 
Ease came with song, he could not buy with gold. 



SONG OF THE ROSE. I95 



SONG OF THE ROSE. 

ATTRIBUTED TO SAPPHO: FROM ACHILLES TATIUS. 

If Zeus chose us a king of the flowers in his mirth, 

He would call to the rose and would royally crown it; 
For the rose, ho, the rose! is the grace of the earth, 

Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it: 
For the rose, ho, the rose! is the eye of the flowers, 

Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair. 
Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowers 

On pale lovers who sit in the glow unaware. 
Ho, the rose breathes of love! ho, the rose lifts the cup 

To the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest! 
Ho, the rose, having curled its sweet leaves for the world, 

Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up. 
As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west! 



134 



icjo anacreon's ode to the swallow. 



ANACREON'S ODE TO THE SWALLOW. 

Thou indeed, little Swallow, 
A sweet yearly comer, 
Art building a hollow 
New nest every summer, 
And straight dost depart 
Where no gazing can follow, 
Past Memphis, down Nile 
Ah, but Love all the while 
Builds his nest in my heart, 
Through the cold winter- weeks: 
And as one Love takes flight. 
Comes another, O Swallow, 
In an egg warm and white, 
And another is callow! 
And the large gaping beaks 
Chirp all day and all night: 
And the Loves who are older 
Help the young and the poor Loves, 
And the young Loves grown bolder 
Increase by the score Loves — 
Why, what can be done? 
If a noise comes from one, 
Can I bear all this rout of a hundred and more Loves? 



' 



THE DEAD PAN. 1 97 



THE DEAD PAN. 

Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas, 
Can ye listen in your silence? 
Can your mystic voices tell us 
Where ye hide? In floating islands, 
With a wind that evermore 
Keeps you out of sight of shore? 

Pan, Pan is dead. 

In what revels are ye sunken, 

In old Ethiopia? 

Have the Pygmies made you drunken, 

Bathing in mandragora 

Your divine pale lips, that shiver 

Like the lotus in the river? 

Pan, Pan is dead. 

Do ye sit there still in slumber, 
In gigantic Alpine rows? 
The black poppies out of number 
Nodding, dripping from your brows 
To the red lees of your wine, 
And so kept alive and fine? 

Pan, Pan is dead. 



198 THE DEAD PAN. 

Or He crushed your stagnant corses 
Where the silver spheres roll on, 
Stung to life by centric forces 
Thrown like rays out from the sun? — 
While the smoke of your old altars 
Is the shroud that round you welters? 

Great Pan is dead 



"Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas," 
Said the old Hellenic tongue, — 
Said the hero-oaths, as well as 
Poets^ songs the sweetest sung: 
Have ye grown deaf in a day? 
Can ye speak not yea or nay, 

Since Pan is dead? 



Do ye leave your rivers flowing 

All alone, O Naiades, 

While your drenched locks dry slow in 

This cold feeble sun and breeze? 

Not a word the Naiads say. 

Though the rivers run for aye; 

For Pan is dead. 



From the gloaming of the oak-wood, 
O ye Dryads, could ye flee? 
At the rushing thunderstroke, would 
No sob tremble through the tree? 
Not a word the Dryads say, 
Though the forests wave for aye; 

For Pan is dead. 



THE DEAD PAN. IQQ 

Have ye left the mountain places, 
Oreads wild, for other tryst 1 
Shall we see no sudden faces 
Strike a glory through the mist? 
Not a sound the silence thrills 
Of the everlasting hills: 

Pan, Pan is dead. 



O twelve gods of Plato's vision, 
Crowned to starry wanderings, 
With your chariots in procession. 
And your silver clash of wings ! 
Very pale ye seem to rise. 
Ghosts of Grecian deities. 

Now Pan is dead! 



Jove, that right hand is unloaded. 
Whence the thunder did prevail, 
While in idiocy of godhead 
Thou art staring the stars pale! 
And thine eagle, blind and old, 
Roughs his feathers in the cold. 

Pan, Pan is dead. 

Where, O Juno, is the glory 
Of thy regal look and tread? 
Will they lay, for evermore, thee. 
On thy dim, straight, golden bed? 
Will thy queendom all lie hid 
Meekly under either lid? 

Pan, Pan is dead. 



200 THE DEAD PAN. 

Ha, Apollo! floats his golden 
Hair all mist-like where he stands, 
While the Muses hang enfolding 
Knee and foot with faint wild hands'? 
'Neath the clanging of thy bow, 
Niobe looked lost as thou! 

Pan, Pan is dead. 

Shall the casque with its brown iron, 
Pallas' broad blue eyes, eclipse. 
And no hero take inspiring 
From the god-Greek of her lips? 
'Neath her olive dost thou sit, 
Mars the mighty, cursing it? 

Pan, Pan is dead. 

Bacchus, Bacchus! on the panther 
He swoons, bound with his own vines; 
And his Maenads slowly saunter, 
Head aside, among the pines. 
While they murmur dreamingly, 
"Evohe — ah — evohe — ! " 

Ah, Pan is dead! 



Neptune lies beside the trident. 
Dull and senseless as a stone; 
And old Pluto deaf and silent 
Is cast out into the sun: 
Ceres smileth stern thereat, 
"We all now are desolate 

Now Pan is dead." 



THE DEAD PAN. 201 

Aphrodite! dead and driven 

As thy native foam, thou art; 

With the cestus long done heaving 

On the white calm of thine heart! 

At Adorns! at that shriek, 

Not a tear runs down her cheek — 

Pan, Pan is dead. 

And the Loves, we used to know from 
One another, huddled lie, 
Frore as taken in a snow-storm, 
Close beside her tenderly; 
As if each had weakly tried 
Once to kiss her as he died. 

Pan, Pan is dead. 

What, and Hermes? Time enthralleth 
All thy cunning, Hermes, thus, 
And the ivy blindly crawleth 
Round thy brave caduceus? 
Hast thou no new message for us, 
Full of thunder and Jove-glories'? 

Nay, Pan is dead. 

Crowned Cybele's great tun-et 
Rocks and crumbles on her head; 
Roar the lions of her chariot 
Toward the wilderness, unfed: 
Scornful children are not mute, — 
"Mother, mother, walk afoot 

Since Pan is dead!^' 



202 THE DEAD PAN. 

In the fiery-hearted centre 
Of the solemn universe, 
Ancient Vesta, — who could enter 
To consume thee with this curse*? 
Drop thy grey chin on thy knee, 
O thou palsied Mystery! 

For Pan is dead. 



Gods, we vainly do adjure you,— 
Ye return nor voice nor sign! 
Not a votary could secure you 
Even a grave for your Divine: 
Not a grave, to show thereby. 
Here these grey old gods do lie. 

Pan, Pan is dead. 



Even that Greece who took your wages. 

Calls the obolus outworn; 

And the hoarse deep-throated ages 

Laugh your godships unto scorn: 

And the poets do disclaim you. 

Or grow colder if they name you — 

And Pan is dead. 



Gods bereaved, gods belated, 
With your purples rent asunder! 
Gods discrowned and desecrated, 
Disinherited of thunder! 
Now, the goats may climb and crop 
The soft grass on Ida's top — 

Now, Pan is dead. 



THE DEAD PAN. 203 

Calm, of old, the bark went onward, 
When a cry more loud than wind, 
Rose up, deepened, and swept sunward, 
From the piled Dark behind; 
And the sun shrank and grew pale. 
Breathed against by the great wail — 

"Pan, Pan is dead." 



And the rowers from the benches 
Fell, each shuddering on his face, 
While departing Influences 
Struck a cold back through the place; 
And the shadow of the ship 
Reeled along the passive deep — 

"Pan, Pan is dead." 



And that dismal cry rose slowly 

And sank slowly through the air, 

Full of spirif s melancholy 

And eternity's despair! 

And they heard the words it said — 

Pan is dead — Great Pan is dead — 

Pan, Pan is dead. 

'Twas the hour when One in Sion 

Hung for love's sake on a cross; 

When His brow was chill with dying, 

And His soul was faint with loss; 

When His priestly blood dropped downward. 

And His kingly eyes looked throneward — 

Then, Pan was dead. 



204 THE DEAD PAN. 

By the love He stood alone in, 
His sole Godhead rose complete, 
And the false gods fell down moaning, 
Each from off his golden seat; 
All the false gods with a cry 
Rendered up their deity — 

Pan, Pan was dead. 



Wailing wide across the islands. 
They rent, vest-like, their Divine; 
And a darkness and a silence 
Quenched the light of every shrine; 
And Dodona's oak swang lonely 
Henceforth, to the tempest only: 

Pan, Pan was dead. 

Pythia staggered, feeling o'er her 

Her lost god's forsaking look; 

Straight her eyeballs filmed with horror. 

And her crispy fillets shook. 

And her lips gasped through their foam, 

For a word that did not come. 

Pan, Pan was dead. 

O ye vain false gods of Hellas, 
Ye are silent evermore! 
And I dash down this old chalice 
Whence libations ran of yore. 
See, the wine crawls in the dust 
Wormlike — as your glories must, 

Since Pan is dead. 



THE DEAD PAN. 205 

Get to dust, as common mortals. 
By a common doom and track! 
Let no Schiller from the portals 
Of that Hades call you back, 
Or instruct us to weep all 
At your antique funeral. 

Pan, Pan is dead. 



By your beauty, which confesses 
Some chief Beauty conquering you, — 
By our grand heroic guesses 
Through your falsehood at the True, — 
We will weep not! earth shall roll 
Heir to each god's aureole — 

And Pan is dead. 



Earth outgrows the mythic fancies 
Sung beside her in her youth. 
And those debonair romances 
Sound but dull beside the truth. 
Phoebus' chariot-course is run: 
Look up, poets, to the sun! 

Pan, Pan is dead. 

Christ hath sent us down the angels; 

And the whole earth and the skies 

Are illumed by altar-candles 

Lit for blessed mysteries; 

And a Priest's hand through creation 

Waveth calm and consecration: 

And Pan is dead. 



206 THE DEAD PAN. 

Truth is fair: should we forego it? 
Can we sigh right for a wrong? 
God himself is the best Poet, 
And the Real is His song. 
Sing His truth out fair and full, 
And secure His beautiful. 

Let Pan be dead. 

Truth is large: our aspiration 
Scarce embraces half we be. 
Shame, to stand in His creation 
And doubt truth's sufficiency! — 
To think God's song unexcelling 
The poor tales of our own telling — 

When Pan is dead. 



What is true and just and honest, 
What is lovely, what is pure, 
All of praise that hath admonisht. 
All of virtue, shall endure; 
These are themes for poet's uses. 
Stirring nobler than the Muses, 

Ere Pan was dead. 



O brave poets, keep back nothing, 
Nor mix falsehood with the whole; 
Look up Godward; speak the truth in 
Worthy song from earnest soul: 
Hold, in high poetic duty. 
Truest Truth the fairest Beauty! 

Pan, Pan is dead. 



SONNETS. 207 



SONNETS. 



THE soul's expression. 



With stammering lips and insufficient sound 

I strive and struggle to deliver right 

That music of my nature j day and night, 

With dream and thought and feeling interwound, 

And inly answering all the senses round 

With octaves of a mystic depth and height 

Which step out grandly to the infinite 

From the dark edges of the sensual ground. 

This song of soul I struggle to outbear 

Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole, 

And utter all myself into the air: 

But if I did it, — as the thunder-roll 

Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there. 

Before that dread apocalypse of soul. 



208 SONNETS. 



PERPLEXED MUSIC. 

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO E. J. 

Experience, like a pale musician, holds 

A dulcimer of patience in his hand, 

Whence harmonies we cannot understand, 

Of God's will in His worlds, the strain unfolds 

In sad, perplexed minors: deathly colds 

Fall on us while we hear, and countermand 

Our sanguine heart back from the fancy-land 

With nightingales in visionaiy wolds. 

We murmur, "Where is any certain tune 

Or measured music in such notes as these T' 

But angels, leaning from the golden seat. 

Are not so minded; their fine ear hath won 

The issue of completed cadences. 

And, smiling down the stars, they whisper — Sweet, 

WORK. 

What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil; 

Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines 

For all the heat o' the day, till it declines. 

And Death's mild curfew shall from work assoil. 

God did anoint thee with His odorous oil. 

To wrestle, not to reign; and He assigns 

All thy tears over, like pure crystallines. 

For younger fellow-workers of the soil 

To wear for amulets. So others shall 

Take patience, labour, to their heart and hand, 

From thy hand and thy heart and thy brave cheer. 

And God's grace fructify through thee to all. 

The least flower, with a brimming cup may stand; 

And share its dew-drop with another near. 



SONNETS. 209 



PAIN IN PLEASURE. 



A Thought lay like a flower upon mine heart, 

And drew around it other thoughts like bees 

For multitude and thirst of sweetnesses; 

Whereat rejoicing, I desired the art 

Of the Greek whistler, who to wharf and mart 

Could lure those insect swarms from orange-trees, 

That I might hive with me such thoughts and please 

My soul so, always. Foolish counterpart 

Of a weak man's vain wishes! While I spoke, 

The thought I called a flower grew nettle-rough. 

The thoughts, called bees, stung me to festering: 

Oh, entertain (cried Reason as she woke,) 

Your best and gladdest thoughts but long enough. 

And they will all prove sad enough to sting! 

FLUSH OR FAUNUS. 

You see this dog; it was but yesterday 

I mused forgetful of his presence here 

Till thought on thought drew downward tear on tear: 

When from the pillow where wet-cheeked I lay, 

A head as hairy as Faunus thrust its way 

Right sudden against my face, two golden-clear 

Great eyes astonished mine, a drooping ear 

Did flap me on either cheek to dry the spray! 

I started first as some Arcadian 

Amazed by goatly god in twilight grove, 

But as the bearded vision closelier ran 

My tears off, I knew Flush, and rose above 

Surprise and sadness, — thanking the true Pan 

Who by low creatures leads to heights of love. 

Elizabeth Broivning, 1 4 



210 SONNETS. 

FINITE AND INFINITE. 

The wind sounds only in opposing straits, 
The sea, beside the shore; man's spirit rends 
Its quiet only up against the ends 
Of wants and oppositions, loves and hates, 
Where, worked and worn by passionate debates, 
And losing by the loss it apprehends. 
The flesh rocks round and every breath it sends 
Is ravelled to a sigh. All tortured states 
Suppose a straitened place. Jehovah Lord, 
Make room for rest, around me! out of sight 
Now float me, of the vexing land abhorred. 
Till in deep calms of space my soul may right 
Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord, 
And rush exultant on the Infinite. 



TO GEORGE SAND. 

A DESIRE. 

Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man, 

Self-called George Sand! whose soul, amid the lions 

Of thy tumultuous senses, moans defiance 

And answers roar for roar, as spirits can: 

I would some mild miraculous thunder ran 

Above the applauded circus, in appliance 

Of thine own nobler nature's strength and science. 

Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan. 

From thy strong shoulders, to amaze the place 

With holier light! that thou to woman's claim 

And man's, might'st join beside the angel's grace 

Of a pure genius sanctified from blame, 

Till child and maiden pressed to thine embrace 

To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame. 



SONNETS. 211 

TO GEORGE SAND. 

A RECOGNITION. 

True genius, but true woman! dost deny 

The woman's nature with a manly scorn, 

And break away the gauds and armlets worn 

By weaker women in captivity? 

Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry 

Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn, — 

Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn 

Floats back dishevelled strength in agony. 

Disproving thy man's name: and while before 

The world thou burnest in a poet-fire. 

We see thy woman-heart beat evermore 

Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher, 

Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore 

Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire! 

LIFE. 

Each creature holds an insular point in space; 

Yet what man stirs a finger, breathes a sound. 

But all the multitudinous beings round, 

In all the countless worlds with time and place 

For their conditions, down to the central base. 

Thrill, haply, in vibration and rebound — 

Life answering life across the vast profound, 

In full antiphony, by a common grace? 

I think this sudden joyaunce which illumes 

A child's mouth sleeping, unaware may run 

From some soul newly loosened from earth's tombs: 

I think this passionate sigh, which half-begun 

I stifle back, may reach and stir the plumes 

Of God's calm angel standing in the sun. 

14* 



212 QUESTION AND ANSWER. 



QUESTION AND ANSWER. 



Love you seek for, presupposes 
Summer heat and sunny glow. 

Tell me, do you find moss-roses 
Budding, blooming in the snow? 

Snow might kill the rose-tree's root — 

Shake it quickly from your foot, 
Lest it harm you as you go. 

From the ivy where it dapples 
A grey ruin, stone by stone, 

Do you look for grapes or apples. 
Or for sad green leaves alone? 

Pluck the leaves off, two or three — 

Keep them for morality 

When you shall be safe and gone. 



INCLUSIONS. 2 1 3 



INCLUSIONS. 



Oh, wilt thou have my hand, Dear, to lie along in 

thine? 
As a little stone in a running stream, it seems to lie 

and pine. 
Now drop the poor pale hand, Dear, unfit to plight 

with thine. 

Oh, wilt thou have my cheek, Dear, drawn closer to 

thine own*? 
My cheek is white, my cheek is worn, by many a tear 

run down. 
Now leave a little space, Dear, lest it should wet thine 

own. 

Oh, must thou have my soul, Dear, commingled with 

thy soul? — 
Red grows the cheek, and warm the hand; the part is 

in the whole: 
Nor hands nor cheeks keep separate, when soul is joined 

to soul. 



214 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 



I THOUGHT once how Theocritus had sung 

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years. 

Who each one in a gracious hand appears 

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: 

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, 

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, 

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, 

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung 

A shadow across me. Straightway I was Vare, 

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move 

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; 

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, — 

"Guess now who holds theel" — "Death," I said. But, 

there. 
The silver answer rang, — "Not Death, but Love." 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 2 I 5 
11. 

But only three in all God's universe 

Have heard this word thou hast said, — Himself, beside 

Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied 

One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse 

So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce 

My sight from seeing thee, — that if I had died, 

The death-weights, placed there, would have signified 

Less absolute exclusion. "Nay" is worse 

From God than from all others, O my friend! 

Men could not part us with their worldly jars. 

Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; 

Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars: 

And, heaven being rolled betw^een us at the end. 

We should but vow the faster for the stars. 



III. 

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart! 

Unlike our uses and our destinies. 

Our ministering two angels look surprise 

On one another, as they strike athwart 

Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art 

A guest for queens to social pageantries. 

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes 

Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part 

Of chief musician. What hast thou to do 

With looking from the lattice-lights at me, 

A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through 

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree*? 

The chrism is on thine head, — on mine, the dew,- 

And Death must dig the level where these agree. 



2l6 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE, 



IV. 

Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, 

Most gracious singer of high poems! where 

The dancers will break footing, from the care 

Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more. 

And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor 

For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear 

To let thy music drop here unaware 

In folds of golden fulness at my door? 

Look up and see the casement broken in, 

The bats and owlets builders in the roof! 

My cricket chirps against thy mandolin. 

Hush, call no echo up in further proof 

Of desolation! there's a voice within 

That weeps ... as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof. 



V. 

I LIFT my heavy heart up solemnly, 

As once Electra her sepulchral urn, 

And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn 

The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see 

What a great heap of grief lay hid in me, 

And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn 

Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn 

Could tread them out to darkness utterly, 

It might be well perhaps. But if instead 

Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow 

The grey dust up, . . . those laurels on thine head, 

O my Beloved, will not shield thee so, 

That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred 

The hair beneath. Stand further off then! go. 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 21? 
VI. 

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand 
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore 
Alone upon the threshold of my door 
Of individual life, I shall command 
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand 
Serenely in the sunshine as before, 
Without the sense of that which I forbore — 
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land 
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine 
With pulses that beat double. What I do 
And what I dream include thee, as the wine 
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue 
God for myself. He hears that name of thine, 
And sees within my eyes the tears of two. 



VII. 

The face of all the world is changed, I think, 

Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul 

Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole 

Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink 

Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, 

Was caught up into love, and taught the whole 

Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole 

God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink. 

And praise its sweetness. Sweet, with thee anear. 

The names of country, heaven, are changed away 

For where thou art or shalt be, there or here; 

And this . . . this lute and song . . . loved yesterday, 

(The singing angels know) are only dear 

Because thy name moves right in what they say. 



2l8 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 



VIII. 

What can I give thee back, O liberal 

And princely giver, who hast brought the gold 

And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, 

And laid them on the outside of the wall 

For such as I to take or leave withal, 

In unexpected largesse? am I cold, 

Ungrateful, that for these most manifold 

High gifts, I render nothing back at all? 

Not so; not cold, — but very poor instead. 

Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run 

The colours from my life, and left so dead 

And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done 

To give the same as pillow to thy head. 

Go farther! let it serve to trample on. 



IX. 

Can it be right to give what I can give? 

To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears 

As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years 

Re-sighing on my lips renunciative 

Through those infrequent smiles which fail to liv^ 

For all thy adjurations? O my fears. 

That this can scarce be right! We are not peers, 

So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve. 

That givers of such gifts as mine are, must 

Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas! 

I will not soil thy purple with my dust, 

Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass, 

Nor give thee any love — which were unjust. 

Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass. 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 2ig 



Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed 

And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, 

Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light 

Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: 

And love is fire. And when I say at need 

/ love thee . . . mark! . . . / love thee — in thy sight 

I stand transfigured, glorified aright. 

With conscience of the new rays that proceed 

Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low 

Li love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures 

Who love God, God accepts while loving so. 

And what Ifeel, across the inferior features 

Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show 

How that great work of Love enhances Nature's. 



XL 

And therefore if to love can be desert, 

I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale 

As these you see, and trembling knees that fail 

To bear the burden of a heavy heart, — 

This weary minstrel-life that once was girt 

To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail 

To pipe now 'gainst the valley nightingale 

A melancholy music, — why advert 

To these things'? O Beloved, it is plain 

I am not of thy worth nor for tiiy place ! 

And yet, because I love thee, I obtain 

From that same love this vindicating grace, 

To live on still in love, and yet in vain, — 

To bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face. 



220 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 



XII. 

Indeed this very love which is my boast, 

And which, when rising up from breast to brow, 

Doth crown me with a ruby large enow 

To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost, — 

This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost, 

I should not love withal, unless that thou 

Hadst set me an example, shown me how, 

When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed, 

And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak 

Of love even, as a good thing of my own: 

Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak. 

And placed it by thee on a golden throne, — 

And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!) 

Is by thee only, whom I love alone. 



XIII. 

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech 

The love I bear thee, finding words enough. 

And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough, 

Between our faces, to cast light on each? — 

I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach 

My hand to hold my spirit so far off 

From myself — me — that I should bring thee proof 

In words, of love hid in me out of reach. 

Nay, let the silence of my womanhood 

Commend my woman-lpve to thy belief, — 

Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed. 

And rend the garment of my life, in brief. 

By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude. 

Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief. 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 22 1 



XIV. 

If thou must love me, let it be for nought 

Except for love's sake only. Do not say 

"I love her for her smile — her look — her way 

Of speaking gently, — for a trick of thought 

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought 

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" — 

For these things in themselves, Beloved, may 

Be changed, or change for thee, — and love, so wrought, 

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for 

Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, — 

A creature might forget to weep, who bore 

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! 

But love me for love's sake, that evermore 

Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity. 



XV. 

Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear 
Too calm and sad a face in front of thine; 
For we two look two ways, and cannot shine 
With the same sunlight on our brow and hair. 
On me thou lookest with no doubting care. 
As on a bee shut in a crystalline; 
Since sorrow hath shut me safe in love's divine, 
And to spread wing and fly in the outer air 
Were most impossible failure, if I strove 
To fail so. But I look on thee — on thee — 
Beholding, besides love, the end of love. 
Hearing oblivion beyond memory; 
As one who sits and gazes from above, 
Over the rivers to the bitter sea. 



222 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 



XVI. 

And yet, because thou overcomest so, 

Because thou art more noble and like a king. 

Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling 

Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow 

Too close against thine heart henceforth to know 

How it shook when alone. Why, conquering 

May prove as lordly and complete a thing 

In lifting upward, as in crushing low! 

And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword 

To one who lifts him from the bloody earth. 

Even so, Beloved, I at last record. 

Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth, 

I rise above abasement at the word. 

Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth. 



XVII. 

My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes 
God set between His After and Before, 
And strike up and strike off the general roar 
Of the rushing worlds a melody that floats 
In a serene air purely. Antidotes 
Of medicated music, answering for 
Mankind's forlornest uses, thou canst pour 
From thence into their ears. God's will devotes 
Thine to such ends, and mine to wait on thine. 
How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use? 
A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine 
Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse? 
A shade, in which to sing — of palm or pine? 
A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose. 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 22^ 



XVIII. 

I NEVER gave a lock of hair away 

To a man, Dearest, except this to thee, 

WTiich now upon my fingers thoughtfully 

I ring out to the full brown length and say 

**Take it." My day of youth went yesterday; 

My hair no longer bounds to my foot's glee, 

Nor plant I it from rose- or myrtle-tree, 

As girls do, any more: it only may 

Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears. 

Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside 

Through sorrow's trick. I thought the funeral-shears 

Would take this first, but Love is justified, — 

Take it thou, — finding pure, from all those years, 

The kiss my mother left here when she died. 



XIX. 

The souFs Rialto hath its merchandize; 

I barter curl for curl upon that mart, 

And from my poet's forehead to my heart 

Receive this lock which outweighs argosies, — 

As purply black, as erst to Pindar's eyes 

The dim purpureal tresses gloomed athwart 

The nine white Muse-brows. For this counterpart, . 

The bay-crown's shade. Beloved, I surmise. 

Still lingers on thy curl, it is so black! 

Thus, with a fillet of smooth-kissing breath, 

I tie the shadows safe from gliding back. 

And lay the gift where nothing hindereth; 

Here on my heart, as on thy brow, to lack 

No natural heat till mine gi'ows cold in death. 



224 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE 
XX. 

Beloved, my Beloved, when I think 
That thou wast in the world a year ago. 
What time I sat alone here in the snow 
And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink 
No moment at thy voice, but, link by link, 
Went counting all my chains as if that so 
They never could fall off at any blow 
Struck by thy possible hand, — why, thus I drink 
Of life's great cup of wonder! Wonderful, 
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night 
With personal act or speech, — nor ever cull 
Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white 
Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull, 
Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight. 



XXI. 

Say over again, and yet once over again. 

That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated 

Should seem "a cuckoo-song," as thou dost treat it. 

Remember, never to the hill or plain. 

Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain 

Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed. 

Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted 

By a doubtful spirit- voice , in that doubt's pain 

Cry, "Speak once more — thou lovest!" Who can fear 

Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll, 

Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year? 

Say thou dost love me, love me, love me — toll 

The silver iterance! — only minding, Dear, 

To love me also in silence with thy soul. 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 225 



XXII. 

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, 
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, 
Until the lengthening wings break into fire 
At either curved point, — what bitter wrong 
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long 
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher, 
The angels would press on us and aspire 
To drop some golden orb of perfect song 
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay- 
Rather on earth. Beloved, — where the unfit 
Contrarious moods of men recoil away 
And isolate pure spirits, and permit 
A place to stand and love in for a day. 
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it 



xxm. 

Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead, 

Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine? 

And would the sun for thee more coldly shine 

Because of grave-damps falling round my head? 

I marvelled, my Beloved, when I read 

Thy thought so in the letter. I am thine — 

But . . so much to thee? Can I pour thy wine 

While my hands tremble? Then my soul, instead 

Of dreams of death, resumes life's lower range. 

Then, love me. Love! look on me — breathe on me! 

As brighter ladies do not count it strange. 

For love, to give up acres and degree, 

I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange 

My near sweet view of heaven, for earth with thee! 

Elizabeth Browning. 1 5 



226 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE, 



XXIV. 

Let the world's sharpness like a clasping knife 
Shut in upon itself and do no harm 
In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm, 
And let us hear no sound of human strife 
After the click of the shutting. Life to life — 
I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm. 
And feel as safe as guarded by a charm 
Against the stab of worldlings, who if rife 
Are weak to injure. Very whitely still 
The lilies of our lives may reassure 
Their blossoms from their roots, accessible 
Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer; 
Growing straight, out of man's reach, on the hill. 
God only, who made us rich, can make us poor. 



XXV. 

A heavy heart, Beloved, have I borne 

From year to year until I saw thy face. 

And sorrow after sorrow took the place 

Of all those natural joys as lightly worn 

As the stringed pearls, each lifted in its turn 

By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace 

Were changed to long despairs, till God's own grace 

Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn 

My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring 

And let it drop adown thy calmly great 

Deep being! Fast it sinketh, as a thing 

Which its own nature does precipitate. 

While thine doth close above it, mediating 

Betwixt the stars and the unaccomplished fate. 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 22^ 

XXVI. 

I LIVED with visions for my company 

Instead of men and women, years ago, 

And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know 

A sweeter music than they played to me. 

But soon their trailing purple was not free 

Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow, 

And I myself grew faint and blind below 

Their vanishing eyes. Then thou didst come — to be. 

Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts, 

Their songs, their splendours, (better, yet the same. 

As river-water hallowed into fonts) 

Met in thee, and from out thee overcame 

My soul with satisfaction of all wants: 

Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame. 



XXVII. 

My own Beloved, who hast lifted me 
From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown, 
And, in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown 
A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully 
Shines out again, as all the angels see. 
Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own, 
Who camest to me when the world was gone, 
And I who looked for only God, found thee! 
I find thee; I am safe, and strong, and glad. „ 
As one who stands in dewless asphodel, 
Looks backward on the tedious time he had 
In the upper life, — so I, with bosom-swell, 
Make witness, here, between the good and bad. 
That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well 

15* 



2 28 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 



XXVIII. 

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! 

And yet they seem alive and quivering 

Against my tremulous hands which loose the string 

And let them drop down on my knee to-night. 

This said, — he wished to have me in his sight 

Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring 

To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, 

Yet I wept for it! — this, . . . the paper's light . . . 

Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed 

As if God's future thundered on my past. 

This said, / am thine — and so its ink has paled 

With lying at my heart that beat too fast. 

And this . . . O Love, thy words have ill availed 

If, what this said, I dared repeat at last! 



XXIX. 

I THINK of thee! — my thoughts do twine and bud 

About thee, as wild vines, about a tree. 

Put out broad leaves, and soon there's nought to see 

Except the straggling green which hides the wood. 

Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood 

I will not have my thoughts instead of thee 

Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly 

Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should, 

Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare, 

And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee, 

Drop heavily down, — burst, shattered, everywhere! 

Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee 

And breathe within thy shadow a new air, 

I do not think of thee — I am too near thee, 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 229 



XXX. 

I SEE thine image through my tears to-night, 
And yet to-day I saw thee smiling. How 
Eefer the cause? — Beloved, is it thou 
Or I, who makes me sad*? The acolyte 
Amid the chanted joy and thankful rite 
May so fall flat, with pale insensate brow, 
On the altar-stair. I hear thy voice and vow. 
Perplexed, uncertain, since thou art out of sight, 
As he, in his swooning ears, the choir's amen. 
Beloved, dost thou love? or did I see all 
The glory as I dreamed, and fainted when 
Too vehement light dilated my ideal, 
For my souFs eyesl Will that light come again. 
As now these tears come — falling hot and real? 



XXXI. 

Thou comest! all is said without a word. 

I sit beneath thy looks, as children do 

In the noon-sun, with souls that tremble through 

Their happy eyelids from an unaverred 

Yet prodigal inward joy. Behold, I erred 

In that last doubt! and yet I cannot rue 

The sin most, but the occasion — that we two 

Should for a moment stand unministered 

By a mutual presence. Ah, keep near and close. 

Thou dove-like help! and, when my fears would rise. 

With thy broad heart serenely interpose; 

Brood down with thy divine sufficiencies 

These thoughts which tremble when bereft of those, 

Like callow birds left desert to the skies. 



230 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 

XXXII. 

The first time that the sun rose on thine oath 

To love me, I looked forward to the moon 

To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon 

And quickly tied to make a lasting troth. 

Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe 

And, looking on myself, I seemed not one 

For such mean's love! — more like an out-of-tune 

Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth 

To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in haste, 

Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note. 

I did not wrong myself so, but I placed 

A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float 

'Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced, — 

And great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat. 

XXXIII. 

Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear 
The name I used to run at, when a child, 
From innocent play, and leave the cowslips piled, 
To glance up in some face that proved me dear 
With the look of its eyes. I miss the clear 
Fond voices which, being drawn and reconciled 
Into the music of Heaven's undefiled, 
Call me no longer. Silence on the bier, 
While I call God— call God!— So let thy mouth 
Be heir to those who are now exanimate. 
Gather the north flowers to complete the south, 
And catch the early love up in the late. 
Yes, call me by that name, — and I, in truth, 
With the same heart, will answer and not wait. 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 23 1 

XXXIV. 

With the same heart, I said, Til answer thee 

As those, when thou shalt call me by my name- — 

Lo, the vain promise! is the same, the same. 

Perplexed and ruffled by life's strategy? 

When called before, I told how hastily 

I dropped my flowers or brake off from a game. 

To run and answer with the smile that came 

At play last moment, and went on with me 

Through my obedience. When I answer now, 

I drop a grave thought, break from solitude; 

Yet still my heart goes to thee — ponder how — 

Not as to a single good, but all my good! 

Lay thy hand on it, best one, and allow 

That no child's foot could run fast as this blood. 



XXXV. 

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange 
And be all to me*? Shall I never miss 
Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss 
That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange. 
When I look up, to drop on a new range 
Of walls and floors, another home than this? 
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is 
Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change? 
That's hardest. If to conquer love, has tried. 
To conquer grief, tries more, as all things prove. 
For grief indeed is love and grief beside. 
Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. 
Yet love me — wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, 
And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove. 



2^2 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE, 

XXXVI. 

When we met first and loved, I did not build 
Upon the event with marble. Could it mean 
To last, a love set pendulous between 
Sorrow and sorrow? Nay, I rather thrilled, 
Distrusting every light that seemed to gild 
The onward path, and feared to overlean 
A finger even. And, though I have grown serene 
And strong since then, I think that God has willed 
A still renewable fear . . . O love, O troth . . . 
Lest these enclasped hands should never hold, 
This mutual kiss drop down between us both 
As an unowned thing, once the lips being cold. 
And Love, be false ! if he, to keep one oath, 
Must lose one joy, by his life's star foretold. 

xxxvn. 

Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make 
Of all that strong divineness which I know 
For thine and thee, an image only so 
Formed of the sand, and fit to shift and break. 
It is that distant years which did not take 
Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow. 
Have forced my swimming brain to undergo 
Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake 
Thy purity of likeness and distort 
Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit. 
As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port, 
His guardian sea-god to commemorate, 
Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort 
And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate. 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 233 



XXXVIII. 

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed 

The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; 

And ever since, it grew more clean and white, 

Slow to world-greetings, quick with its "Oh, list," 

When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst 

I could not wear here, plainer to my sight. 

Than that first kiss. The second passed in height 

The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed. 

Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed! 

That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown, 

With sanctifying sweetness, did precede. 

The third upon my lips was folded down 

In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed, 

I have been proud and said, "My love, my own." 



XXXIX. 

Because thou hast the power and own'st the grace 
To look through and behind this mask of me, 
(Against which, years have beat thus blanchingly 
With their rains,) and behold my soul's true face, 
The dim and weary witness of life's race, — 
Because thou hast the faith and love to see. 
Through that same soul's distracting lethargy, 
The patient angel waiting for a place 
In the new Heavens, — because nor sin nor woe. 
Nor God's infliction, nor death's neighbourhood. 
Nor all which others viewing, turn to go. 
Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed, — 
Nothing repels thee, . . . Dearest, teach me so 
To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good! 



234 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 



XL. 

Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours! 

I will not gainsay love, called love forsooth: 

I have heard love talked in my early youth. 

And since, not so long back but that the flowers 

Then gathered, smell still. Mussulmans and Giaours 

Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth 

For any weeping. Polypheme's white tooth 

Slips on the nut if, after frequent showers. 

The shell is over-smooth, — and not so much 

Will turn the thing called love, aside to hate 

Or else to oblivion. But thou art not such 

A lover, my Beloved! thou canst wait 

Through sorrow and sickness, to bring souls to touch 

And think it soon when others cry "Too late." 



XLI. 

I THANK all who have loved me in their hearts, 

With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all 

Who paused a little near the prison-wall 

To hear my music in its louder parts 

Ere they went onward, each one to the mart's 

Or temple's occupation, beyond call. 

But thou, who, in my voice's sink and fall 

When the sob took it, thy divinest Art's 

Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot 

To harken what I said between my tears, . . . 

Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot 

My soul's full meaning into future years. 

That they should lend it utterance, and salute 

Love that endures, from Life that disappears! 



SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 235 



XLII. 

^^ My future ivill not copy fair my past ^^ — 

I. wrote that once; and thinking at my side 

My ministering life-angel justified 

The word by his appealing look upcast 

To the white throne of God, I turned at last, 

And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied 

To angels in thy soul! Then I, long tried 

By natural ills, received the comfort fast. 

While budding, at thy sight, my pilgrim's staff 

Gave out green leaves with morning dews impearled. 

I seek no copy now of life's first half: 

Leave here the pages with long musing curled. 

And write me new my future's epigraph. 

New angel mine, unhoped for in the world! 



XLIII. 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height 

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight 

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. 

I love thee to the level of everyday's 

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. 

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; 

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. 

I love thee with the passion put to use 

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. 

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose 

With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath. 

Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose, 

I shall but love thee better after death. 



236 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. 



XLIV. 

Belove£), thou hast brought me many flowers 

Plucked in the garden, all the summer through 

And winter, and it seemed as if they grew 

In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers. 

So, in the like name of that love of ours, 

Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too, 

And which on warm and cold days I withdrew 

From my heart's ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers 

Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue, 

And wait thy weeding; yet here's eglantine, 

Here 's ivy ! — take them, as I used to do 

Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine. 

Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, 

And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine. 



CALLS ON THE HEART. 237 



CALLS ON THE HEART. 



Free Heart, that singest to-day 
Like a bird on the first green spray, 
Wilt thou go forth to the world 
Where the hawk hath his wing unfurled 

To follow, perhaps, thy wayl 
Where the tamer thine own will bind, 
And, to make thee sing, will blind. 
While the little hip grows for the free behind? 
Heart, wilt thou go? 
—"No, no! 
"Free hearts are better so." 

The world, thou hast heard it told. 
Has counted its robber-gold. 
And the pieces stick to the hand; 
The world goes riding it fair and grand, 

While the truth is bought and sold; 
World-voices east, world-voices west. 
They call thee. Heart, from thine early rest, 
"Come hither, come hither and be our guest.'' 
Heart, wilt thou go? 
—"No, no! 
"Good hearts are calmer so." 



l^S CALLS ON THE HEART. 

Who calleth thee, Heart? World's Strife, 
With a golden heft to his knife; 
World's Mirth, with a finger fine 
That draws on a board in wine 

Her blood-red plans of life; 
World's Gain, with a brow knit down; 
World's Fame, with a laurel crown 
Which rustles most as the leaves turn brown: 
Heart, wilt thou go? 
—"No, no! 
"Calm hearts are wiser so." 



Hast heard that Proserpina 
(Once fooling) was snatched away 
To partake the dark king's seat. 
And the tears ran fast on her feet 

To think how the sun shone yesterday? 
With her ankles sunken in asphodel 
She wept for the roses of earth which fell 
From her lap when the wild car drave to hell. 
Heart, wilt thou go? 
—"No, no! 
"Wise hearts are warmer so." 



And what is this place not seen. 
Where Hearts may hide serene? 
"'Tis a fair still house well-kept, 
"Which humble thoughts have swept, 

**And holy prayers made clean. 
"There, I sit with Love in the sun, 
"And we two never have done 



CALLS ON THE HEART. 239 

"Singing sweeter songs than are guessed by oney 
Heart, wilt thou gol 
—"No, no! 
"Warm hearts are fuller so " 

O Heart, O Love, — I fear 
That Love may be kept too near. 
Hast heard, O Heart, that tale, 
How Love may be false and frail 
To a Heart once holden dear*? 
— "But this true Love of mine 
"Clings fast as the clinging vine, 
"And mingles pure as the grapes in wine." 
Heart, wilt thou go*? 
—"No, no! 
"Full hearts beat higher so." 

O Heart, O Love, beware! 

Look up, and boast not there, 

For who has twirled at the pin? 

'Tis the World, between Death and Sin,~ 

The World and the World's Despair! 
And Death has quickened his pace 
To the hearth, with a mocking face. 
Familiar as Love, in Love's own place. 
Heart, wilt thou go% 
—"Still, no! 
"High hearts must grieve even so." 

The house is waste to-day, — 
The leaf has dropt from the spray, 
The thorn, prickt through to the song: 
If summer doeth no wronsr 



240 CALLS ON THE HEART. 

The winter will, they say. 
Sing, Heart! what heart replies? 
In vain we were calm and wise. 
If the tears unkissed stand on in our eyes. 
Heart, wilt thou go? 
—"Ah, no! 
"Grieved hearts must break even so." 

Howbeit all is not lost. 
The warm noon ends in frost. 
And worldly tongues of promise. 
Like sheep-bells die oif from us 

On the desert hills cloud-crossed: 
Yet through the silence shall 
Pierce the death-angeFs call. 
And "Come up hither," recover all. 
Heart, wilt thou go? 
—"I go! 
"Broken hearts triumph so." 



n 



CONFESSIONS. 24 1 



CONFESSIONS. 

Face to face in my chamber, my silent chamber, I saw 

her: 
God and she and I only, there I sat down to draw her 
Soul through the clefts of confession, — "Speak, I am 

holding thee fast. 
As the angel of resurrection shall do it at the last!^' 
"My cup is blood-red 
With my sin," she said, 
"And I pour it out to the bitter lees, 
As if the angels of judgment stood over me strong at 
the last 

Or as thou wert as these." 



When God smote His hands together, and struck out 

thy soul as a spark 
Into the organized glory of things, from deeps of the 

dark, — 
Say, didst thou shine, didst thou burn, didst thou honour 

the power in the form. 
As the star does at night, or the fire-fly, or even the 

little ground-worm? 

"I have sinned," she said, 
"For my seed-light shed 

Eilzaheth Broiv?iii'!^. 10 



242 CONFESSIONS. 

Has smouldered away from His first decrees. 
The cypress praiseth the fire-fly, the ground-leaf praiseth 
the worm; 

I am viler than these." 



When God on that sin had pity, and did not trample 

thee straight 
With His wild rains beating and drenching thy light 

found inadequate; 
When He only sent thee the north- wind, a little searching 

and chill, 
To quicken thy flame — didst thou kindle and flash to 
the heights of His will? 

"I have sinned," she said, 
"Unquickened, unspread 
My nre dropt down, and I wept on my knees: 
I only said of His winds of the north as I shrank from 
their chill. 

What delight is in these r' 



When God on that sin had pity, and did not meet it 

as such, 
But tempered the wind to thy uses, and softened the 

world to thy touch, 
At least thou wast moved in thy soul, though unable 

to prove it afar, 
Thou couldst carry thy light like a jewel, not giving it 

out like a star? 

"I have sinned " she said, 
"And not merited 



CONFESSIONS. 243 

The gift He gives, by the grace He sees! 
The mine-cave praiseth the jewel, the hill-side praiseth 
the star; 

I am viler than these." 



Then I cried aloud in my passion, — Unthankful and 

impotent creature, 
To throw up thy scorn unto God tlii'ough the rents in 

thy beggarly nature! 
If He, the all-giving and loving, is served so unduly, 

what then 
Hast thou done to the weak and the false and the 
changing, — thy fellows of men] 
"I have lovedy'' she said, 
(Words bowing her head 
As the wind the wet acacia-trees,) 
"I saw God sitting above me, but I ... I sat among 
men, 

And I have loved these." 



Again with a lifted voice, like a choral trumpet that 

takes 
The lowest note of a viol that trembles, and triumphing 

breaks 
On the air with it solemn and clear, — "Behold! I have 

sinned not in this! 
Where I loved, I have loved much and well, — I have 

verily loved not amiss. 

Let the living," she said, 
"Inquire of the dead. 



244 CONFESSIONS. 

In the house of the pale-fronted images: 
My own true dead will answer for me, that I have not 
loved amiss 

In my love for all these. 



"The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep 

it by day and by night; 
Their least step on the stair, at the door, still throbs 

through me, if ever so light; 
Their least gift, which they left to my childhood, far 

off in the long-ago years, 
Is now turned from a toy to a relic, and seen through 
the crystals of tears. 

Dig the snow," she said, 
"For my churchyard bed. 
Yet I, as I sleep, shall not fear to freeze, 
If one only of these my beloveds, shall love me with 
heart-warm tears. 

As I have loved these! 



'Tf I angered any among them, from thenceforth my 

own life was sore; 
If I fell by chance from their presence, I clung to their 

memory more: 
Their tender I often felt holy, their bitter I sometimes 

called sweet; 
And whenever their heart has refused me, I fell down 

straight at their feet. 

I have loved," she said, — 
"Man is weak, God is dread. 



CONFESSIONS. 245 

Yet the weak man dies with his spirit at ease, 
Having poured such an unguent of love but once on 
the Saviour's feet, 

As I lavished for these." 



Go, I cried, thou hast chosen the Human, and left the 

Divine! 
Then, at least, have the Human shared with thee their 

wild berry- wine? 
Have they loved, back thy love, and when strpaigers 

approached thee with blame. 
Have they covered thy fault with their kisses, and loved 
thee the same? 

But she shxrunk and said, 
"God, over my head. 
Must sv/eep in the wrath of His judgment-seas. 
If He shall deal with me sinning, but only indeed the 
same 

And no gentler than these," 



246 A man's requirements. 



A MAN'S REQUIREMENTS. 

Love me, Sweet, with all thou art^ 

Feeling, thinking, seeing; 
Love me in the lightest part, 

Love me in full being. 

Love me with thine open youth 

In its frank surrender; 
With the vowing of thy mouth, 

With its silence tender. 

Love me with thine azure eyes, 

Made for earnest granting; 
Taking colour from the skies, 

Can Heaven's truth be wanting? 

Love me with their lids, that fall 

Snow-like at first meeting; 
Love me with thine heart, that all 

Neighbours then see beating. 

Love me with thine hand stretched out 

Freely — open-minded : 
Love me with thy loitering foot,-— 

Hearing one behind it. 



' A man's requirements. 247 

Love me with thy voice, that turns 

Sudden faint above me; 
Love me with thy blush that burns 

When I murmur, Love me! 

Love me with thy thinking soul, 

Break it to love-sighing; 
Love me with thy thoughts that roll 

On through living — dying. 

Love me in thy gorgeous airs, 

When the world has crowned thee; 

Love me, kneeling at thy prayers, 
With the angels round thee. 

Love me pure, as musers do, 

Up the woodlands shady; 
Love me gaily, fast and true, 

As a winsome lady. 

Through all hopes that keep us brave, 

Further off or nigher, 
Love me for the house and grave, 

And for something higher. 

Thus, if thou wilt prove me, Dear, 

Woman's love no fable, 
/ will love thee — half a year — 

As a man is able. 



248 THE lady's yes. 



THE LADFS YES. 

"Yes," I answered you last night; 

"No," this morning, sir, I say: 
Colours seen by candle-light 

Will not look the same by day. 

When the viols played their best, 
Lamps above and laughs below, 

Love me sounded like a jest, 
Fit for^^^ or fit for no. 

Call me false or call me free, 
Vow, whatever light may shine,— 

No man on your face shall see 
Any grief for change on mine. 

Yet the sin is on us both; 

Time to dance is not to woo; 
Wooing light makes fickle troth, 

Scorn of me recoils on you. 

Learn to win a lady's faith 
Nobly as the thing is high, 

Bravely, as for life and death, 
With a loyal gravity. 



may's love. 249 

Lead her from the festive boards^ 

Point her to the starry skies; 
Guard her, by your truthful words, 

Pure from courtship's flatteries. 

By your truth she shall be true, 

Ever true, as wives of yore; 
And her j/es, once said to you, 

Shall be Yes for evermore. 



MAY'S LOVE. 

You love all, you say, 

Round, beneath, above me: 

Find me then some way 
Better than to love me, 

Me, too, dearest May! 

O world-kissing eyes 

Which the blue heavens melt to! 
I, sad, overwise, 

Loathe the sweet looks dealt to 
All things — men and flies. 

You love all, you say: 

Therefore, Dear, abate me 

Just your love, I pray! 

Shut your eyes and hate me — 

Only me — fair May! 



250 amy's cruelty. 



AMY^S CRUELTY. 

Fair Amy of the terraced house, 

Assist me to discover 
Why you who would not hurt a mouse 

Can torture so your lover. 

You give your coffee to the cat, 

You stroke the dog for coming, 
And all your face grows kinder at 

The little brown bee's humming. 

But when he haunts your door . . the town 
Marks coming and marks going . . 

You seem to have stitched your eyelids down 
To that long piece of sewing! 

You never give a look, not you. 
Nor drop him a "Good-morning," 

To keep his long day warm and blue, 
So fretted by your scorning. 

She shook her head — "The mouse and bee 
For crumb or flower will linger: 

The dog is happy at my knee, 
The cat purrs at my finger. 

"But ^^ . . to him^ the least thing given 
Means great things at a distance; 

He wants my world, my sun, my heaven, 
Soul, body, whole existence. 



amy's cruelty. 251 

"They say love gives as well as takes; 

But Vm a simple maiden, — 
My mother's first smile when she wakes 

I still have smiled and prayed in. 

"I only know my mother's love 

Which gives all and asks nothing; 
And this new loving sets the groove 

Too much the way of loathing. 

"Unless he gives me all in change, 

I forfeit all things by him: 
The risk is terrible and strange — 

I tremble, doubt, . . deny him. 

"He's sweetest friend, or hardest foe. 

Best angel, or worst devil; 
I either hate or . . love him so, 

I can't be merely civil! 

"You trust a woman who puts forth. 

Her blossoms thick as summer's 1 
You think she dreams what love is worth, 

Who casts it to new-comers'? 

"Such love's a cowslip-ball to fling, 

A moment's pretty pastime; 
/ give . . all me, if anything, 

The first time and the last time. 

"Dear neighbour of the trellised house, 

A man should murmur never, 
Though treated worse than dog and mouse, 

Till doted on for ever!" 



252 MY KATE. 



MY KATE. 

She was not as pretty as women I know, 
And yet all your best made of sunshine and snow 
Drop to shade, melt to nought in the long-trodden ways, 
While she^s still remembered on warm and cold days — • 

My Kate. 

Her air had a meaning, her movements a grace; 
You turned from the fairest to gaze on her face: 
And when you had once seen her forehead and mouth, 
You saw as distinctly her soul and her truth — 

My Kate. 

Such a blue inner light from her eyelids outbroke, 
You looked at her silence and fancied she spoke: 
When she did, so peculiar yet soft was the tone, 
Though the loudest spoke also, you heard her alone — 

My Kate. 

I doubt if she said to you much that could act 
As a thought or suggestion: she did not attract 
In the sense of the brilliant or wise: I infer 
'Twas her thinking of others, made you think of her — 

My Kate. 



MY KATE. 253 

She never found fault with you, never implied 
Your wrong by her right; and yet men at her side 
Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town 
The children were gladder that pulled at her gown — 

My Kate. 

None knelt at her feet confessed lovers in thrall; 
They knelt more to God than they used, — that was all; 
If you praised her as charming, some asked what you 

meant. 
But the charm of her presence was felt when she went — 

My Kate. 

The weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude, 
She took as she found them, and did them all good; 
It always was so with her: see what you have! 
She has made the grass greener even here . . wdth her 
grave — 

My Kate. 

My dear one! — when thou wast alive with the rest, 
I held thee the sweetest and loved thee the best: 
And now thou art dead, shall I not take thy part 
As thy smiles used to do for thyself, my sw^eet Heart — 

My Kate] 



254 -^ FALSE STEFo 



A FALSE STEP. 

Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart. 

Pass! there's a world full of men, 
And women as fair as thou art 

Must do such things now and then. 

Thou only hast stepped unaware, — 

Malice, not one can impute; 
And why should a heart have been there 

In the way of a fair woman's foot? 

It was not a stone that could trip, 
Nor was it a thorn that could rend: 

Put up thy proud underlip! 

'Twas merely the heart of a friend. 

And yet peradventure one day 
Thou, sitting alone at the glass, 

Remarking the bloom gone away. 

Where the smile in its dimplement was. 

And seeking around thee in vain 
From hundreds who flattered before. 

Such a word as, "Oh, not in the main 
Do I hold thee less precious, but more!' 

Thou'It sigh, very like, on thy part, 
"Of all I have known or can know, 

I wish I had only that Heart 
I trod upon ages ago!" 



THE MASK. 255 



THE MASK. 

I HAVE a smiling face, she said, 

I have a jest for all I meet, 
I have a garland for my head 

And all its flowers are sweet, — 
And so you call me gay, she said. 

Grief taught to me this smile, she said, 
And Wrong did teach this jesting bold; 

These flowers were plucked from garden-bed 
While a death-chime was tolled: 

And what now will you say] she said. 

Behind no prison-grate, she said, 

Which slurs the sunshine half a mile, 

Live captives so uncomforted 
As souls behind a smile. 

God's pity let us pray, she said. 

I know my face is bright, she said, — 
Such brightness dying suns difl'use: 

I bear upon my forehead shed 
The sign of what I lose, 

Tiie ending of my day. she said. 



256 THE MASK. 

If I dared leave this smile, she said, 
And take a moan upon my mouth, 

And tie a cypress round my head, 
And let my tears run smooth, 

It were the happier way, she said. 

And since that must not be, she said, 
I fain your bitter world would leave. 

How calmly, calmly, smile the dead, 
Who do not, therefore, grieve! 

The yea of Heaven is yea, she said. 

But in your bitter world, she said, 
Face-joy 's a costly mask to wear; 

'Tis bought with pangs long nourished. 
And rounded to despair: 

Griefs earnest makes life's play, she said. 

Ye weep for those who weep? she said — 
Ah fools! I bid you pass them by. 

Go, weep for those whose hearts have bled 
What time their eyes were dry. 

Whom sadder can I say? she said. 



A year's spinning. 257 



A YEAR'S SPINNING. 

He listened at the porch that day, 
To hear the wheel go on, and on; 

And then it stopped, ran back away, 

While through the door he brought the sun. 
But now my spinning is all done. 

He sat beside me, with an oath 

That love ne'er ended, once begun: 

I smiled — believing for us both, 
What was the truth for only one. 
And now my spinning is all done. 

My mother cursed me that I heard 
A young man's wooing as I spun: 

Thanks, cruel mother, for that word, — • 
For I have, since, a harder known! 
And now my spinning is all done. 

I thought — O God! — my first-born's cry 
Both voices to mine ear would drown: 

I listened in mine agony — 

It was the silence made me groan! 
And now my spinning is all done. 

Elizabeth Browning. 17 



>58 A year's spinning. 

Bury me 'twixt my mother's grave 

(Who cursed me on her death-bed lone) 

And my dead baby's (God it save!) 

Who, not to bless me, would not moan. 
And now my spinning is all done. 

A stone upon my heart and head, 
But no name written on the stone! 

Sweet neighbours, whisper low instead, 
"This sinner was a loving one — 
And now her spinning is all done." 

And let the door ajar remain, 
In case he should pass by anon; 

And leave the wheel out very plain,-— 
That HE, when passing in the sun, 
May see the spinning is all done. 



CHANGE UPON CHANGE. 259 



CHANGE UPON CHANGE. 

Five months ago, the stream did flow, 
The lilies bloomed within the sedge, 

And we were lingering to and fro, 

Where none will track thee in this snow, 
Along the stream, beside the hedge. 

Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go! 
For if I do not hear thy foot, 
The frozen river is as mute, 
The flowers have dried down to the root: 
And why, since these be changed since May, 
Shouldst thou change less than they? 

And slow, slow as the winter snow. 
The tears have drifted to mine eyes; 

And my poor cheeks, five months ago 

Set blushing at thy praises so. 
Put paleness on for a disguise. 

Ah, Sweet, be free to praise and go! 
For if my face is turned too pale, 
It was thine oath that first did fail, — 
It was thy love proved false and frail: 
And why, since these be changed enow, 
Should / change less than thou? 

17* 



260 THAT DAY. 



THAT DAY. 

I STAND by the river where both of us stood, 
And there is but one shadow to darken the flood; 
And the path leading to it, where both used to pass, 
Has the step but of one, to take dew from the grass, — 

One forlorn since that day. 

The flowers of the margin are many to see; 
None stoops at my bidding to pluck them for me. 
The bird in the alder sings loudly and long, — 
My low sound of weeping disturbs not his song. 

As thy vow did, that day. 

I stand by the river, I think of the vow; 
Oh, calm as the place is, vow-breaker, be thou! 
I leave the flower growing, the bird unreproved; 
Would I trouble thee rather than them, my beloved, — 
And my lover that day? 

Go, be sure of my love, by that treason forgiven; 
Of my prayers, by the blessings they win thee from 

Heaven; 
Of my grief — (guess the length of the sword by the 

sheath's) 
By the silence of life, more pathetic than death's! 

Go, — be clear of that day! 



VOID IN LAW. 25 1 



VOID IN LAW. 

Sleep, little babe, on my knee. 

Sleep, for the midnight is chill, 
And the moon has died out in the tree. 

And the great human world goeth ill. 
Sleep, for the wicked agree: 

Sleep, let them do as they will. 
Sleep. 

Sleep, thou hast drawn from my breast 
The last drop of milk that was good; 

And now, in a dream, suck the rest. 
Lest the real should trouble thy blood. 

Suck, little lips dispossessed. 

As we kiss in the air whom we would. 

Sleep. 

O lips of thy father! the same. 
So like! Very deeply they swore 

When he gave me his ring and his name. 
To take back, I imagined, no more! 

And now is all changed like a game. 

Though the old cards are used as of yore? 

Sleep. 



lb 2 VOID IN LAW. 

"Void in law/' said the courts. Something wrong 
In the forms? Yet, "Till death part us two, 

I, James, take thee, Jessie," was strong. 
And One witness competent. True 

Such a marriage was worth an old song. 

Heard in Heaven, though, as plain as the New. 

Sleep. 

Sleep, little child, his and mine! 

Her throat has the antelope curve, 
And her cheek just the colour and line 

Which fade not before him nor swerve: 
Yet she has no child! — the divine 

Seal of right upon loves that deserve. 
Sleep. 



My child! though the world take her part, 
Saying, "She was the woman to choose, 

He had eyes, was a man in his heart,"- — 
We twain the decision refuse: 

We . . . weak as I am, as thou art, ... 
Cling on to him, never to loose. 

Sleep. 

He thinks that, when done with this place, 
All's ended "^ he'll new-stamp the ore? 

Yes, Caesar's — but not in our case. 
Let him learn we are waiting before 

The grave's mouth, the Heaven's gate God's face, 
With implacable love evermore. 

Sleep 



VOID IN LAW. 26c 

He's ours, though he kissed her but now; 

He's ours, though she kissed in reply; 
He's ours, though himself disavow, 

And God's universe favour the lie; 
Ours to claim, ours to clasp, ours below 

Ours above, ... if we live, if we die. 
Sleep. 

Ah baby, my baby, too rough 

Is my lullaby"? What have I said? 
Sleep! When I've wept long enough 

I shall learn to weep softly instead, 
And piece with some alien stuff 

My heart to lie smooth for thy head. 
Sleep. 

Two souls met upon thee, my sweet; 

Two loves led thee out to the sun: 
Alas, pretty hands, pretty feet, 

If the one who remains (only one) 
Set her grief at thee, turned in a heat 

To thine enemy, — were it well done? 
Sleep. 

May He of the manger stand near 
And love thee! An infant He came 

To His own who rejected Him here, 

But the Magi brought gifts all the same. 

/ hurry the cross on my Dear! 
M)^ gifts are the griefs I declaim! 

Sleep. 



264 MY HEART AND I. 



MY HEART AND L 

Enough! we're tired, my heart and L 
We sit beside the headstone thus, 
And wish that name were carved for us. 

The moss reprints more tenderly 

The hard types of the mason's knife, 
As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life 

With which we're tired, my heart and I. 

You see we're tired, my heart and I. 
We dealt with books, we trusted men, 
And in our own blood drenched the pen. 

As if such colours could not fly. 

We walked too straight for fortune's end. 
We loved too true to keep a friend; 

At last we're tired, my heart and L 

How tired we feel, my heart and I! 

We seem of no use in the world; 

Our fancies hang grey and uncurled 
About men's eyes indifferently; 

Our voice which thrilled you so, will let 

You sleep; our tears are only wet: 
What do we here, my heart and I? 



MY HEi^RT AND I. 265 

So tired, so tired, my heart and I! 
It was not thus in that old time 
When Ralph sat with me ^neath the lime 

To watch the sunset from the sky. 

"Dear love, you're looking tired," he said, 
I, smiling at him, shook my head: 

'Tis now we're tired , my heart and L 

So tired, so tired, my heart and I! 

Though now none takes me on his arm 
To fold me close and kiss me warm 

Till each quick breath end in a sigh 
Of happy languor. Now, alone. 
We lean upon this graveyard stone, 

Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I. 

Tired out we are, my heart and I. 
Suppose the world brought diadems 
To tempt us, crusted with loose gems 

Of powers and pleasures'? Let it try. 
We scarcely care to look at even 
A pretty child, or God's blue heaven, 

We feel so tired, my heart and I. 

Yet who complains*? My heart and II 

In this abundant earth no doubt 

Is little room for things worn out: 
Disdain them, break them, throw them by! 

And if before the days grew rough 

We once were loved, used,— well enough, 
I think, we've fared, my heart and I. 



266 THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD. 



THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD. 

What's the best thing in the world? 
June-rose, by May-dew impearled; 
Sweet south-wind, that means no rain; 
Truth, not cruel to a friend; 
Pleasure, not in haste to end; 
Beauty, not self-decked and curled 
Till its pride is over-plain; 
Light, that never makes you wink; 
Memory, that gives no pain; 
Love, when, so, you're loved again. 
What's the best thing in the world? 
— Something out of it, I think. 



''DIED ..." 267 



"DIED . . /' 
(The ''Times'' Obituary,) 

What shall we add now? He is dead. 
And I who praise and you who blame, 
With wash of words across his name, 
Find suddenly declared instead — 
''On Sunday^ third of August y deadJ^ 

Which stops the whole we talked to-day. 

I, quickened to a plausive glance 

At his large general tolerance 
By common people's narrow way, 
Stopped short in praising. Dead, they say. 

And you, who had just put in a sort 
Of cold deduction — "rather, large 
Through weakness of the continent marge, 
Than greatness of the thing contained" — 
Broke off. Dead! — there, you stood restrained. 

As if we had talked in following one 

Up some long gallery. "Would you choose 
An air like that? The gait is loose — 
Or noble." Sudden in the sun 
An oubliette winks. Where is he? Gone. 



268 "DIED ../' 

Dead. Man's «I was'' by God's "I am"— 

All hero-worship comes to that. 

High heart, high thought, high fame, as flat 
As a gravestone. Bring your facet jam — 
The epitaph's an epigram. 

Dead. There's an answer to arrest 
All carping. Dust's his natural place? 
He'll let the flies buzz round his face 
And, though you slander, not protest] 
— From such an one, exact the Best? 

Opinions gold or brass are null. 
We chuck our flattery or abuse. 
Called Caesar's due, as Charon's dues, 

r the teeth of some dead sage or fool, 

To mend the grinning of a skull. 

Be abstinent in praise or blame. 

The man's still mortal, who stands first, 
And mortal only, if last and worst. 

Then slowly lift so frail a fame. 

Or softly drop so poor a shame. 



ONLY A CURL. 269 



ONLY A CURL. 

Friends, of faces unknown and a land 

Unvisited over the sea, 
Who tell me how lonely you stand 
With a single gold curl in the hand 

Held up to be looked at by me, — 

While you ask me to ponder and say 
What a father and mother can do, 
With the bright fellow-locks put away 
Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay 
Where the violets press nearer than you. 

Shall I speak like a poet, or run 

Into weak woman's tears for relief 1 
Oh, children! — I never lost one, — 
Yet my arm's round my own little son, 
And Love knows the secret of Grief. 

And I feel what it must be and is, 

When God draws a new angel so 
Through the house of a man up to His, 
With a murmur of music, you miss, 
And a rapture of light, you forego. 



S70 ONLY A CURL. 

How you think, staring on at the door, 
Where the face of your angel flashed in, 

That its brightness, familiar before. 

Burns off from you ever the more 
For the dark of your sorrow and sin. 

"God lent him and takes him," you sigh 

—Nay, there let me break with your pain: 
God's generous in giving, say I, — 
And the thing which He gives, I deny 
That He ever can take back again. 

He gives what He gives. I appeal 

To all who bear babes — in the hour 
When the veil of the body we feel 
Rent round us, — while torments reveal 
The motherhood's advent in power. 

And the babe cries! — has each of us known 

By apocalypse (God being there 
Full in nature) the child is our own. 
Life of life, love of love, moan of moan, 
Through all changes, all times, everywhere. 

He's ours and for ever. Believe, 

O father! — O mother, look back 
To the first love's assurance. To give 
Means with God not to tempt or deceive 
With a cup thrust in Benjamin's sack. 

He gives what He gives. Be content! 

He resumes nothing given, — be sure! 
God lend? Where the usurers lent 
In His temple, indignant He went 

And scourged away all those impure. 



ONLY A CURL. 27 1 

He lends not; but gives to the end, 

As He loves to the end. If it seem 
That He draws back a gift, comprehend 
'Tis to add to it rather, — amend. 

And finish it up to your dream, — 

Or keep, — as a mother will toys 

Too costly, though given by herself. 
Till the room shall be stiller from noise, 
And the children more fit for such joys. 

Kept over their heads on the shelf. 

So look up, friends! you, who indeed 

Have possessed in your house a sweet piece 
Of the Heaven which men strive for, must need 
Be more earnest than others are, — speed 
Where they loiter, persist where they cease. 

You know how one angel smiles there. 

Then weep not. 'Tis easy for you 
To be drawn by a single gold hair 
Of that curl, from earth's storm and despair, 

To the safe place above us. Adieu. 



272 A child's grave at FLORENCE. 



A CIULD'S GRAVE AT FLORENCK 

A. A. E. C. 
Born, July 1848. Died, November 1849. 

Of English blood, of Tuscan birth, 
What country should we give her? 

Instead of any on the earth. 
The civic Heavens receive her. 

And here among the English tombs 
In Tuscan ground we lay her, 

While the blue Tuscan sky endomes 
Our English words of prayer. 

A little child! — how long she lived, 
By months, not years, is reckoned: 

Born in one July, she survived 
Alone to see a second. 

Bright- featured, as the July sun 
Her little face still played in. 

And splendours, with her birth begun, 
Had had no time for fading. 

So, Lily, from those July hours, 
No wonder we should call her; 

She looked such kinship to the flowers, 
Was but a little taller. 



A child's grave at FLORENCE. 273 

A Tuscan Lily, — only white, 

As Dante, in abhorrence 
Of red corruption, wished aright 

The lilies of his Florence. 

We could not wish her whiter, — her 
Who perfumed with pure blossom 

The house — a lovely thing to wear 
Upon a mother's bosom! 

This July creature thought perhaps 

Our speech not worth assuming; 
She sat upon her parents' laps 

And mimicked the gnat's humming; 

Said "father," "mother"— then left off, 

For tongues celestial, fitter: 
Her hair had grown just long enough 

To catch Heaven's jasper-glitter. 

Babes! Love could always hear and see 

Behind the cloud that hid them. 
"Let little children come to Me, 

And do not thou forbid them." 

So, unforbidding, have we met, 

And gently here have laid her, 
Though winter is no time to get 

The flowers that should o'erspread her: 

We should bring pansies quick with spring. 

Rose, violet, daffodilly, 
And also, above everything, 

White lilies for our Lily. 

Elizabeth Brov.mi?ig: I S 



2 74 A child's grave at FLORENCE. 

Nay, more than flowers, this grave exacts,— 

Glad, grateful attestations 
Of her sweet eyes and pretty acts, 

With calm renunciations. 

Her very mother with light feet 
Should leave the place too earthy. 

Saying, "The angels have thee, Sweet, 
Because we are not worthy." 

But winter kills the orange-buds, 

The gardens in the frost are. 
And all the heart dissolves in floods, 

Remembering we have lost her. 

Poor earth, poor heart, — too weak, too weak 

To miss the July shining! 
Poor heart! — what bitter words we speak 

When God speaks of resigning! 

Sustain this heart in us that faints. 

Thou God, the self-existent! 
We catch up wild at parting saints, 

And feel Thy heaven too distant. 

The wind that swept them out of sin. 

Has ruffled all our vesture: 
On the shut door that let them in, 

We beat with frantic gesture, — 

"To us, us also, open straight! 

The outer life is chilly; 
Are we too, like the earth, to wait 

Till next year for our Lily?" 



A child's grave at FLORENCE. 275 

— Oh, my own baby on my knees, 

My leaping, dimpled treasure. 
At every word I write like these. 

Clasped close with stronger pressure! 

Too well my own heart understands, — 

At every word beats fuller — 
My little feet, my little hands, 

And hair of Lily's colour! 

But God gives patience, Love learns strength, 

And Faith remembers promise. 
And Hope itself can smile at length 

On other hopes gone from us. 

Love, strong as Death, shall conquer Death, 
Through struggle, made more glorious: 

This mother stills her sobbing breath, 
Renouncing yet victorious. 

Arms, empty of her child, she lifts 

With spirit unbereaven, — 
"God will not all take back His gifts; 

My Lily 's mine in Heaven. 

"Still mine! maternal rights serene 

Not given to another! 
The crystal bars shine faint between 

The souls of child and mother. 

"Meanwhile," the mother cries, "content! 

Our love was well divided: 
Its sweetness following where she went. 

Its anguish stayed where I did. 



276 A child's grave at FLORENCE. 

"Well done of God, to halve the lot, 
And give her all the sweetness; 

To us, the empty room and cot, — 
To her, the Heaven's completeness. 

"To us, this grave, — to her, the rows 
The mystic palm-trees spring in; 

To us, the silence in the house,- — 
To her, the choral singing. 

"For her, to gladden in God's view, — 
For us, to hope and bear on. 

Grow, Lily, in thy garden new, 
Beside the Rose of Sharon! 

"Grow fast in Heaven, sweet Lily clipped, 
In love more calm than this is, 

And may the angels dewy-lipped 
Remind thee of our kisses! 

"While none shall tell thee of our tears. 
These human tears now falling. 

Till, after a few patient years, 
One home shall take us all in — 

"Child, father, mother — who, left out? 

Not mother, and not father! 
And when, our dying couch about, 

The natural mists shall gather, 

"Some smiling angel close shall stand 

In old Correggio's fashion, 
And bear a Lily in his hand. 

For death's annunciation." 



LITTLE MATTIE. 2/7 



LITTLE MATTIE. 

Dead! Thirteen a month ago! 

Short and narrow her life's walk 
Lover's love she could not know 

Even by a dream or talk: 
Too young to be glad of youth, 

Missing honour, labour, rest, 
And the warmth of a babe's mouth 

At the blossom of her breast. 
Must you pity her for this 
And for all the loss it is, 
You, her mother, with wet face. 
Having had all in your case? 

Just so young but yesternight. 

Now she is as old as death. 
Meek, obedient in your sight, 

Gentle to a beck or breath 
Only on last Monday! Yours, 

Answering you like silver bells 
Lightly touched! An hour matures: 

You can teach her nothing else. 
She has seen the mystery hid 
Under Egypt's pyramid: 
By those eyelids pale and close 
Now she knows what Rhamses knows 



578 LITTLE MATTIE. 

Cross her quiet hands, and smooth 

Down her patient locks of silk, 
Cold and passive as in truth 

You your fingers in spilt milk 
Drew along a marble floor; 

But her lips you cannot wring 
Into saying a word more, 

"Yes," or "No," or such a thing: 
Though you call and beg and wreak 
Half your soul out in a shriek, 
She will lie there in default 
And most innocent revolt. 



Ay, and if she spoke, may be 

She would answer like the Son, 
"What is now 'twixt thee and me?" 

Dreadful answer! better none. 
Yours on Monday, God's to-day! 

Yours, your child, your blood, your heart, 
Called . . you called her, did you say, 

"Little Mattie" for your part? 
Now already it sounds strange. 
And you wonder, in this change, 
What He calls His angel-creature, 
Higher up than you can reach her. 

'Twas a green and easy world 

As she took it; room to play, 
(Though one's hair might get uncurled 

At the far end of the day). 
What she suffered she shook off* 

In the sunshine; what she sinned 



LITTLE MATTIE. 279 

She could pray on high enough 
To keep safe above the wind. 
If reproved by God or you, 
'Twas to better her, she knew; 
And if crossed, she gathered still 
'Twas to cross out something ill. 

You, you had the right, you thought, 

To survey her with sweet scorn. 
Poor gay child, who had not caught 

Yet the octave-stretch forlorn 
Of your larger wisdom! Nay, 

Now your places are changed so, 
In that same superior way 

She regards you dull and low 
As you did herself exempt 
From life's sorrows. Grand contempt 
Of the spirits risen awhile, 
Who look back with such a smile! 

There's the sting oft. That, I think, 

Hurts the most a thousandfold. 
To feel sudden, at a wink, 

Some dear child we used to scold, 
Praise, love both ways, kiss and tease, 

Teach and tumble as our own. 
All its curls about our knees, 

Rise up suddenly full-grown. 
Wlio could wonder such a sight 
Made a woman mad outright? 
Show me Michael with the sword 
Rather than such angels. Lord! 



2 8o NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 



NAPOLEON III. m ITALY. 

Emperor, Emperor! 

From the centre to the shore, 

From the Seine back to the Rhine, 
Stood eight millions up and swore 

By their manhood's right divine 
So to elect and legislate, 

This man should renew the line 
Broken in a strain of fate 
And leagued kings at Waterloo, 
When the people's hands let go. 
Emperor 
Evermore. 

With a universal shout 

They took the old regalia out, 

From an open grave that day; 

From a grave that would not close. 
Where the first Napoleon lay 

Expectant, in repose, 
As still as Merlin, w^ith his conquering face 

Turned up in its unquenchable appeal 
To m.en and heroes of the advancing race,- 

Prepared to set the seal 
Of what has been on what shall be. 
Emperor 
Evermore. 



NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY 28 r 

The thinkers stood aside 

To let the nation act. 

Some hated the new-constituted fact 
Of empire, as pride treading on their pride. 
Some quailed, lest what was poisonous in the past 

Should graft itself in that Druidic bough 
On this green Now. 
Some cursed, because at last 

The open heavens to which they had looked in vain 
For many a golden fall of marvellous rain 
Were closed in brass; and some 
Wept on because a gone thing could not come; 
And some were silent, doubting all things for 
That popular conviction, — evermore 
Emperor. 



That day I did not hate 

Nor doubt, nor quail nor curse. 
I, reverencing the people, did not bate 
My reverence of their deed and oracle, 
Nor vainly prate 

Of better and of worse. 
Against the great conclusion of their will. 

And yet, O voice and verse. 
Which God set in me to acclaim and sing 
Conviction, exaltation, aspiration. 
We gave no music to the patent thing, 

Nor spared a holy rhythm to throb and swim 

About the name of him 
Translated to the sphere of domination 

By democratic passion! 
I was not used, at least, 



282 NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 

Nor can be, now or then, 
To stroke the ermine beast 
On any kind of throne, 
(Though builded by a nation for its own), 
And swell the surging choir for kings of men — 
^^ Emperor 
Evermore." 



But now, Napoleon, now 
That, leaving far behind the purple throng 

Of vulgar monarchs, thou 

Tread'st higher in thy deed 

Than stair of throne can lead, 
To help in the hour of wrong 
The broken hearts of nations to be strong, — 

Now, lifted as thou art 

To the level of pure song, 
We stand to meet thee on these Alpine snows! 

And while the palpitating peaks break out 
Ecstatic from somnambular repose 

With answers to the presence and the shout, 
We, poets of the people, who take part 

With elemental justice, natural right, 
Join in our echoes also, nor refrain. 

We meet thee, O Napoleon, at this height 
At last, and find thee great enough to praise. 
Receive the poet's chrism, which smells beyond 

The priesfs, and pass thy ways; — 
An English poet warns thee to maintain 
God's word, not England's:— let His truth be true 
And all men liars! with His truth respond 
To all men's lie. Exalt the sword and smite 



NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 283 

On that long anvil of the Apennine 

Where Austria forged the Italian chain in view 

Of seven consenting nations, sparks of fine 

Admonitory light, 
Till men's eyes wink before convictions new. 
Flash in God's justice to the world's amaze, 
Sublime Deliverer! — after many days 
Found worthy of the deed thou art come to do — 

Emperor 

Evermore. 



But Italy, my Italy, 

Can it last, this gleam? 
Can she live and be strong, 

Or is it another dream 
Like the rest we have dreamed so long? 
And shall it, must it be. 
That after the battle-cloud has broken 

She v/ill die off again 

Like the rain, 
Or like a poet's song 

Sung of her, sad at the end 
Because her name is Italy, — 

Die and count no friend ] 
Is it true, — may it be spoken, — 

That she who has lain so still, 
With a w^ound in her breast. 
And a flower in her hand, 
And a grave-stone under her head, 

While every nation at will 
Beside her has dared to stand, 
And flout her with pity and scorn, 



284 NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 

Saying J "She is at rest, 
She is fair, she is dead, 
And, leaving room in her stead 
To Us who are later bom, 

This is certainly best!" 
Saying, "Alas, she is fair. 
Very fair, but dead, — give place. 
And so we have room for the race." 
— Can it be true, be true. 
That she lives anew? 
That she rises up at the shout of her sons, 

At the trumpet of France, 
And lives anew? — is it true 

That she has not moved in a trance, 
As in Forty-eight? 

When her eyes were troubled with blood 
Till she knew not friend from foe, 
Till her hand was caught in a strait 
Of her cerement and baffled so 

From doing the deed she would; 
And her weak foot stumbled across 
The grave of a king. 
And down she dropt at heavy loss, 

And we gloomily covered her face and said, 
"We have dream.ed the thing; 

She is not alive, but dead." 



Now, shall we say 

Our Italy lives indeed? 
And if it were not for the beat and bray 
Of drum and trump of martial men. 
Should we feel the underground heave and strain, 



NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 285 

Where heroes left their dust as a seed 
Sure to emerge one day? 
And if it were not for the rhythmic march 

Of France and Piedmont's double hosts. 

Should we hear the ghosts 
Thrill through ruined aisle and arch, 

Throb along the frescoed wall, 
Whisper an oath by that divine 
They left in picture, book, and stone, 

That Italy is not dead at all? 
Ay, if it were not for the tears in our eyes, 
These tears of a sudden passionate joy, 

Should we see her arise 
From the place where the wicked are overthrown^ 
Italy, Italy? loosed at length 

From the tyrant's thrall, 
Pale and calm in her strength? 
Pale as the silver cross of Savoy 
W^hen the hand that bears the flag is brave, 
And not a breath is stirring, save 

What is blown 
Over the war-trump's lip of brass, 
Ere Garibaldi forces the pass! 



Ay, it is so, even so. 

Ay, and it shall be so. 
Each broken stone that long ago 
She flung behind her as she went 
In discouragement and bewilderment 
Tlirough the cairns of Time, and missed her way 
Between to-day and yesterday. 

Up springs a living man. 



286 NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 

And each man stands with his face in the light 

Of his own drawn sword, 
Ready to do what a hero can. 

Wall to sap, or river to ford, 
Cannon to fronts or foe to pursue, 
Still ready to do, and sworn to be true, 

As a man and a patriot can. 

Piedmontese, Neapolitan, 
Lombard, Tuscan, Romagnole, 
Each man's body having a soul, — 
Count how many they stand. 
All of them sons of the land. 

Every live man there 
Allied to a dead man below. 

And the deadest with blood to spare 
To quicken a living hand 
In case it should ever be slow. 
Count how many they come 
To the beat of Piedmont's drum, 

With faces keener and grayer 

Than swords of the Austrian slayer, 
All set against the foe. 
"Emperor 
Evermore." 



Out of the dust, where they ground them, 
Out of the holes, where they dogged them. 

Out of the hulks, where they wound them 
In iron, tortured and flogged them; 

Out of the streets, where they chased them. 
Taxed them, and then bayoneted them, — 

Out of the homes, where they spied on them, 



NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 287 

(Using their daughters and wives), 

Out of the church, where they fretted them, 
Rotted their souls and debased them, 

Trained them to answer with knives. 
Then cursed them all at their prayers! — 
Out of cold lands, not theirs, 
Where they exiled them, starved them, lied on 

them; 
Back they come like a wind, in vain 

Cramped up in the hills, that roars its road 
The stronger into the open plain; 
Or like a fire that bums the hotter 

And longer for the crust of cinder, 
Serving better the ends of the potter; 

Or like a restrained word of God, 

Fulfilling itself by what seems to hinder. 
"Emperor 
Evermore." 



Shout for France and Savoy! 

Shout for the helper and doer. 
Shout for the good sword's ring. 

Shout for the thought still truer. 
Shout for the spirits at large 
Who passed for the dead this spring. 

Whose living glory is sure. 
Shout for France and Savoy! 
Shout for the council and charge! 

Shout for the head of Cavour; 
And shout for the heart of a King 
That's great with a nation's joy! 

Shout for France and Savoy! 



2 88 NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 

Take up the child, Macmahon, though 

Thy hand be red 

From Magenta's dead, 
And riding on, in front of the troop, 

In the dust of the whirlwind of war 
Through the gate of the city of Milan, stoop 
And take up the child to thy saddle-bow, 
Nor fear the touch as soft as a flower of his smile as 

clear as a star! 
Thou hast a right to the child, we say, 
Since the women are weeping for joy as they 
Who, by thy help and from this day. 

Shall be happy mothers indeed. 
They are raining flowers from terrace and roof: 

Take up the flower in the child. 
While the shout goes up of a nation freed 

And heroically self-reconciled. 
Till the snow on that peaked Alp aloof 
Starts, as feeling God's finger anew. 
And all those cold white marble fires 
Of mounting saints on the Duomo-spires 

Flicker against the Blue. 
"Emperor 
Evermore.'' 



Ay, it is He, 
Who rides at the King's right hand! 
Leave room to his horse and draw to the side. 

Nor press too near in the ecstasy 
Of a newly delivered impassioned land: 

He is moved, you see, 
He who has done it all. 



. NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 289 

They call it a cold stem face; 

But this is Italy 
Who rises up to her place! — 
For this he fought in his youth*, 
Of this he dreamed in the past; 
The lines of the resolute mouth 
Tremble a little at last. 
Cry, he has done it all! 

"Emperor 

Evermore." 

It is not strange that he did it, 

Though the deed may seem to strain 
To the wonderful, unpermitted. 

For such as lead and reign. 
But he is strange, this man: 

The people's instinct found him 
(A wind in the dark that ran 
Through a chink where was no door), 

And elected him and crowned him 
Emperor 
Evermore. 

Autocrat? let them scoff, 

Who fail to comprehend 
That a ruler incarnate of 

The people, must transcend 
All common king-born kings. 
These subterranean springs 
A sudden outlet winning 

Have special virtues to spend. 
The people's blood runs through him, 

Dilates from head to foot, 

EUzaheth BroivHing. 1 9 



290 NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 

Creates him absolute, 
And from this great beginning 

Evokes a greater end 
To justify and renew him — 
Emperor 
Evermore. 

What! did any maintain 

That God or the people (think!) 

Could make a marvel in vain? — 

Out of the water-jar there, 
Draw wine that none could drink? 
Is this a man like the rest, 

This miracle, made unaware 

By a rapture of popular air, 
And caught to the place that was best? 
You think he could barter and cheat 

As vulgar diplomates use, 
With the people's heart in his breast? 
Prate a lie into shape 
Lest truth should cumber the road; 

Play at the fast and loose 
Till the world is strangled with tape; 
Maim the souPs complete 

To fit the hole of a toad; 
And filch the dogman's meat 

To feed the offspring of God? 

Nay, but he, this wonder, 

He cannot palter nor prate, 
Though many around him and under, 
With intellects trained to the curve, 
Distrust him in spirit and nerve 



NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 29! 

Because his meaning is straight. 
Measure him ere he depart 

AVith those who have governed and led 
Larger so much by the heart, 
Larger so much by the head. 
Emperor 
Evermore, 

He holds that, consenting or dissident, 

Nations must move with the time; 
Assumes that crime with a precedent 

Doubles the guilt of the crime; 
— Denies that a slaver's bond, 

Or a treaty signed by knaves, 
(^Quorum magna pars and beyond 
Was one of an honest name) 
Gives an inexpugnable claim 

To abolish men into slaves. 
Emperor 
Evermore. 

He will not swagger nor boast 

Of his country's meeds, in a tone 
Missuiting a great man most 

If such should speak of his own; 
Nor will he act, on her side. 

From motives baser, indeed, 
Than a man of noble pride 

Can avow for himself at need; 
Never, for lucre or laurels, 

Or custom, though such should be rife, 
Adapting the smaller morals 

To measure the larger life, 

19* 



292 NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 

He, though the merchants persuade, 

And the soldiers are eager for strife, 
Finds not his country in quarrels 

Only to find her in trade, — 
While still he accords her such honour 

As never to flinch for her sake 
Where men put service upon her, 

Found heavy to undertake 
And scarcely like to be paid: 
Believing a nation may act 

Unselfishly — shiver a lance 
(As the least of her sons may, in fact) 

And not for a cause of finance. 
Emperor 
Evermore. 



Great is he, 
Who uses his greatness for all. 
His name shall stand perpetually 

As a name to applaud and cherish. 
Not only within the civic wall 
For the loyal, but also without 

For the generous and free. 

Just is he. 
Who is just for the popular due 

As well as the private debt 
The praise of nations ready to perish 
Fall on him, — crown him in view 

Of tyrants caught in the net. 
And statesmen dizzy with fear and doubt! 
And though, because they are many. 

And he is merely one, 



NAPOLEON III. IN ITALY. 293 

And nations selfish and cruel 
Heap up the inquisitor's fuel 

To kill the body of high intents, 
And burn great deeds from their place, 
Till this, the greatest of any, 

May seem imperfectly done; 

Courage, whoever circumvents! 
Courage, courage, whoever is base! 
The soul of a high intent, be it known, 
Can die no more than any soul 
Which God keeps by Him under the throne; 
And this, at whatever interim, 

Shall live, and be consummated 
Into the being of deeds made whole. 
Courage, courage! happy is he, 

Of whom (himself among the dead 

And silent), this word shall be said: 
— That he might have had the world with him. 

But chose to side with suffering men. 

And had the world against him when 
He came to deliver Italy. 
Emperor 
Evermore. 



294 FIRST NEWS FROM VILLAFRANCA. 



FIRST NEWS FROM VILLAFRANCA. 

Peace, peace, peace, do you say? 

What! — with the enemy's guns in our ears? 

With the country's wrong not rendered back? 
What! — while Austria stands at bay 

In Mantua, and our Venice bears 

The cursed flag of the yellow and black? 

Peace, peace, peace, do you say? 

And this the Mincio? Where's the fleet. 
And Where's the sea? Are we all blind 

Or mad with the blood shed yesterdays 
Ignoring Italy under our feet, 
And seeing things before, behind? 

Peace, peace, peace, do you say? 

What! — uncontested, undenied? 

Because we triumph, we succumb? 
A pair of Emperors stand in the way. 

One of whom is a man, beside) 

To sign and seal our cannons dumb? 

No, not Napoleon! — he who mused 

At Paris, and at Milan spake. 

And at Solferino led the fight: 
Not he we trusted, honoured, used 

Our hopes and hearts for . . till they break — 

Even so, you tell us . . in his sight. 



FIRST NEWS FROM VILLAFRAXCA. 295 

Peace, peace, is still your word? 

We say you lie then! — that is plain. 

There ts no peace, and shall be none. 
Our very dead would cry "Absurd!" 

And clamour that they died in vain, 

And whine to come back to the sun. 

Hash! more reverence for the dead! 

T/ieyve done the most for Italy 

Evermore since the earth was fair. 
Now would that we had died instead. 

Still dreaming peace meant liberty, 

And did not, could not mean despair. 

Peace, you say? — yes, peace, in truth! 

But such a peace as the ear can achieve 

Twixt the rifle's click and the rush of the ball, 
'Twixt the tiger's spring and the crunch of the tooth, 

'Twixt the dying atheist's negative 

And God's face — waiting, after all! 



296 A TALE OF VILIJIFRANCA. 



A TALE OF VILLAFRANCA. 

TOLD IN TUSCANY. 

My little son, my Florentine, 

Sit down beside my knee, 
And I will tell you why the sign 

Of joy which flushed our Italy, 
Has faded since but yesternight; 
And why your Florence of delight 

Is mourning as you see. 

A great man (who was crowned one day) 

Imagined a great Deed: 
He shaped it out of cloud and clay, 

He touched it finely till the seed 
Possessed the flower: from heart and brain 
He fed it with large thoughts humane, 

To help a people's need. 

He brought it out into the sun — 

They blessed it to his face: 
"O great pure Deed, that hast undone 

So many bad and base! 
O generous Deed, heroic Deed, 
Come forth, be perfected, succeed, 

Deliver by God's grace!" 



A TALE OF VILLAFRANCA. 297 

Then sovereigns, statesmen, north and south, 

Rose up in wrath and fear. 
And cried, protesting by one mouth, 

"What monster have we here? 
A great Deed at this hour of day? 
A great just deed — and not for pay? 

Absurd, — or insincere." 



"And if sincere, the heavier blow 

In that case we shall bear, 
For Where's our blessed "status quo,'* 

Our holy treaties, where, — 
Our rights to sell a race, or buy, 
Protect and pillage, occupy, 

And civilize despair?'' 

Some muttered that the great Deed meant 

A great pretext to sin; 
And others, the pretext, so lent, 

Was heinous (to begin). 
Volcanic terms of "great" and "just?" 
Admit such tongues of flame, the crust 

Of time and law falls in. 



A great Deed in this world of ours? 

Unheard of the pretence is: 
It threatens plainly the great Powers; 

Is fatal in all senses. 
A just Deed in the world? — call out 
The rifles! be not slack about 

The national defences! 



298 A TALE OF VILLAFRANCA. 

And many murmured, "From this source 
What red blood must be poured!" 

And some rejoined, "'Tis even worse; 
What red tape is ignored!" 

All cursed the Doer for an evil 

Called here, enlarging on the Devil, — 
There, monkeying the Lord! 



Some said, it could not be explained, 
Some, could not be excused; 

And others, "Leave it unrestrained, 
Gehenna's self is loosed." 

And all cried, "Crush it, maim it, gag it! 

Set dog-toothed lies to tear it ragged. 
Truncated and traduced!" 



But He stood sad before the sun, 
(The peoples felt their fate). 

"The world is many, — I am one; 
My great Deed was too great. 

God's fruit of justice ripens slow: 

Men's souls are narrow; let them grow. 
My brothers, we must wait." 

The tale is ended, child of mine, 
Turned graver at my knee. 

They say your eyes, my Florentine, 
Are English: it may be: 

And yet IVe marked as blue a pair 

Following the doves across the square 
At Venice by the sea. 



A VIEW ACROSS THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA. 299 

Ah, child! ah, child! I cannot say 

A word more. You conceive 
The reason now, why just to-day 

We see our Florence grieve. 
Ah, child, look up into the sky! 
In this low world, where great Deeds die, 

What matter if we live'? 



A VIEW ACROSS THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA. 
1861. 

Over the dumb Campagna-sea, 

Out in the offing through mist and rain. 

Saint Peter's Church heaves silently 
Like a mighty ship in pain. 
Facing the tempest with struggle and strain. 

Motionless waifs of ruined towers, 

Soundless breakers of desolate land: 
The sullen surf of the mist devours 

That mountain-range upon either hand. 

Eaten away from its outline grand. 

And over the dumb Campagna-sea 

Where the ship of the Church heaves on to wreck, 

Alone and silent as God must be, 

The Christ walks. Ay, but Peter's neck 
Is stiff to turn on the foundering deck. 



300 A VIEW ACROSS THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA. 

Peter, Peter, if such be thy name, 

Now leave the ship for another to steer. 

And proving thy faith evermore the same, 

Come forth, tread out through the dark and drear. 
Since He who walks on the sea is here. 

Peter, Peter! He does not speak; 

He is not as rash as in old Galilee: 
Safer a ship, though it toss and leak. 

Than a reeling foot on a rolling sea! 

And he's got to be round in the girth, thinks he. 

Peter, Peter! He does not stir; 

His nets are heavy with silver fish; 
He reckons his gains, and is keen to infer 

— "The broil on the shore, if the Lord should wish; 

But the sturgeon goes to the Caesar's dish." 

Peter, Peter! thou fisher of men, 

Fisher of fish wouldst thou live instead] 

Haggling for pence with the other Ten, 
Cheating the market at so much a head. 
Griping the Bag of the traitor Dead] 

At the triple crow of the Gallic cock 

Thou weep'st not, thou, though thine eyes be dazed: 

What bird comes next in the tempest-shock] 
— Vultures! see, — as when Romulus gazed, — 
To inaugurate Rome for a world amazed! 



A COURT LADY. 3OI 



A COURT LADY. 

Her hair was tawny with gold, her eyes with purple 

were dark, 
Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless 

spark. 

Never was lady of Milan nobler in name and in race; 
Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face. 

Never was lady on earth more true as woman and wife, 
Larger in judgment and instinct, prouder in manners 
and life. 

She stood in the early morning, and said to her maidens, 

"Bring 
That silken robe made ready to wear at the court of 

the king. 

"Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear of the 

mote, 
Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the 

small at the throat. 

"Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to fasten 

the sleeves. 
Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of snow 

from the eaves." 



302 A COURT LADY. 

Gorgeous she entered the sunlight which gathered her 

up in a flame, 
While, straight in her open carriage, she to the hospital 

came. 

In she went at the door, and gazing from end to end, 
"Many and low are the pallets, but each is the place 
of a friend.^' 

Up she passed through the wards, and stood at a 

young man's bed: 
Bloody the band on his brow, and livid the droop of 

his head. 

"Art thou a Lombard, my brother! Happy art thou," 

she cried, 
And smiled like Italy on him: he dreamed in her face 

and died. 

Pale with his passing soul, she went on still to a second: 
He was a grave hard man, whose years by dungeons 
were reckoned. 

Wounds in his body were sore, wounds in his life 

were sorer. 
"Art thou a Romagnolel" Her eyes drove lightnings 

before her. 

"Austrian and priest had joined to double and tighten 

the cord 
Able to bind thee, O strong one, — free by the stroke 

of a sword. 



A COURT LADY. 3O3 

"Now be grave for the rest of us, using the life over- 
cast 

To ripen our wine of the present, (too new,) in glooms 
of the past." 

Down she stepped to a pallet where lay a face like a 

girl's 
Young, and pathetic with d}dng, — a deep black hole 

in the curls. 

"Art thou from Tuscany, brother? and seest thou, 

dreaming in pain, 
Thy mother stand in the piazza, searching the List of 

the slain]'' 

Kind as a mother herself, she touched his cheeks with 

her hands: 
"Blessed is she who has borne thee, although she 

should weep as she stands." 

On she passed to a Frenchman, his arm carried off 

by a ball: 
Kjieeling, . . "O more than my brother! how shall I 

thank thee for all] 

"Each of the heroes around us has fought for his land 

and line. 
But thou hast fought for a stranger, in hate of a wrong 

not thine. 

"Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dis- 
possessed: 

But blessed are those among nations, who dare to be 
strong for the rest!" 



304 A COURT LADY. 

Ever she passed on her way, and came to a couch 

where pined 
One with a face from Venetia, white with a hope out 

of mind. 

Long she stood and gazed, and twice she tried at the 

name, 
But two great crystal tears were all that faltered and 

came. 

Only a tear for Venice? — she turned as in passion and 

loss, 
And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she 

were kissing the cross. 

Faint with that strain of heart she moved on then to 

another, 
Stern and strong in his death. "And dost thou suffer, 

my brother?" 

Holding his hands in hers: — "Out of the Piedmont lion 
Cometh the sweetness of freedom! sweetest to live or 
to die on." 

Holding his cold rough hands, — "Well, oh, well have 

ye done 
In noble, noble Piedmont, who would not be noble 

alone." 

Back he fell while she spoke. She rose to her feet 

with a spring, — 
"That was a Piedmontese! and this is the Court of the 

King." 



PARTING LOVERS. 3O5 



PARTING LOVERS. 
Siena, i860. 

I LOVE thee, love thee, Giulio; 

Some call me cold, and some demure; 
And if thou hast ever guessed that so 

I loved thee . . . well, the proof was poor, 
And no one could be sure. 

Before thy song (with shifted rhymes 

To suit my name) did I undo 
The persian? If it stirred sometimes. 

Thou hast not seen a hand push through 
A foolish flower or two. 

My mother listening to my sleep, 

Heard nothing but a sigh at night, — 

The short sigh rippling on the deep, 

When hearts run out of breath and sight 
Of men, to God^s clear light. 

When others named thee, — thought thy brows 
Were straight, thy smile was tender, — "Here 

He comes between the vineyard-rows!" 
I said not "Ay," nor waited. Dear, 
To feel thee step too near. 

Elizabeth Brcnvning, 20 



306 PARTING LOVERS. 

I left such things to bolder girls, — 

Olivia or Clotilda. Nay, 
When that Clotilda, through her curls. 

Held both thine eyes in hers one day, 
I marvelled, let me say. 

I could not try the woman's trick: 
Between us straightway fell the blush 

Which kept me separate, blind and sick. 
A wind came with thee in a flush. 
As blown through Sinai's bush. 

But now that Italy invokes 

Her young men to go forth and chase 
The foe or perish, — nothing chokes 

My voice or drives me from the place. 
I look thee in the face. 

I love thee. It is understood, 
Confest: I do not shrink or start. 

No blushes! all my body's blood 

Has gone to greaten this poor heart, 
That, loving, we may part. 

Our Italy invokes the youth 

To die if need be. Still there's room, 
Though earth is strained with dead in truth : 

Since twice the lilies were in bloom 
They have not grudged a tomb. 

And many a plighted maid and wife 
And mother, who can say since then 

"My country," — cannot say through life 

"My son," "my spouse," "my flower of men," 
And not weep dumb again. 



PARTING LOVERS. 307 

Heroic males the country bears, — 

But daughters give up more than sons: 

Flags wave, drums beat, and unawares 
You flash your souls out with the guns, 
And take your Heaven at once. 

But we! — we empty heart and home 
Of life's life, love! We bear to think 

You're gone, — to feel you may not come, — 
To hear the door-latch stir and clink. 
Yet no more you! . . . nor sink. 

Dear God! when Italy is one, 

Complete, content from bound to bound, 
Suppose, for my share, earth's undone, 

By one grave in't! — as one small wound 
Will kill a man, 'tis found. 

What then*? If love's delight must end. 
At least we'll clear its truth from flaws. 

I love thee, love thee, sweetest friend! 
Now take my sweetest without pause, 
And help the nation's cause. 

And thus, of noble Italy 

We'll both be worthy. Let her show 
The future how we made her free, 

Not sparing life . . . nor Giulio, 

Nor this . . . this heartbreak! Go. 



20* 



308 MOTHER AND POET. 



MOTHER AND POET. 

Turin, after News from Gaeta, i86i. 

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east. 
And one of them shot in the west by the sea. 

Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast 
And are wanting a great song for Italy free, 
Let none look at me! 

Yet I was a poetess only last year, 

And good at my art, for a woman, men said; 
But this woman, this, who is agonized here, 

— The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head 
For ever instead. 

What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain! 

What art is she good at, but hurting her breast 
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain? 
Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you 
pressed. 
And I proud, by that test. 

What art's for a woman? To hold on her knees 
Both darlings; to feel all their arms round her throat. 

Cling, strangle a little; to sew by degrees 

And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat; 
To dream and to doat. 



MOTHER AND POET. 309 

To teach them ... It stings there! /made them indeed 
Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no 
doubt, 
That a country's a thing men should die for at need. 
/ prated of liberty, rights, and about 
The tyrant cast out. 

And when their eyes flashed . . . O my beautiful eyes! . . . 

/ exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels 
Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise 
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then 
one kneels! 
God, how the house feels! 

At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled 

With my kisses, — of camp-life and glory, and how 
They both loved me; and, soon coming home to be 
spoiled, 
In return would fan off every fly from my brow 
With their green laurel-bough. 

Then was triumph at Turin: "Ancona was free!" 
And some one came out of the cheers in the street, 

With a face pale as stone, to say something to me. 
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet, 
While they cheered in the street. 

I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime 

As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained 
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time 
When the first grew immortal, while both of us 
strained 
To the height he had gained. 



310 MOTHER AND POET. 

And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong 
Writ now but in one hand, "I was not to faint, — 

One loved me for two — would be with me ere long: 
And Viva I' Italia! — he died for, our saint, 
Who forbids our complaint." 

My Nanni would add, "he was safe, and aware 

Of a presence that turned off the balls, — was imprest 

It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear. 
And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossessed, 
To live on for the rest." 

On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line 

Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta: — Shot, 
Tell his mother. Ah, ah, "his," "their" mother, — not 
"mine," 
No voice says ^^My mother" again to me. What! 
You think Guido forgot? 

Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven, 
They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe? 

I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven 
Through That Love and Sorrow which reconciled so 
The Above and Below. 

O Christ of the five wounds, who look'dst through the 
dark 
To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray. 
How we common mothers stand desolate, mark, 
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned 
away. 
And no last word to say! 



MOTHER AND POET. 3 1 1 

Both boys dead? but that's out of nature. We all 
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep 
one. 
'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall; 

And, when Italy's made, for what end is it done 
• If we have not a son? 

Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then? 

When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport 
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men? 

When the guns of Cavalli with final retort 
Have cut the game short? 

When Venice and Rome kept their new jubilee. 
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, 
and red, 
When _you have your country from mountain to sea, 
When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head, 
(And / have my Dead) — 

What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low, 
And burn your lights faintly! Jlfy country is f/iere, 

Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow: 
My Italy's there, with my brave civic Pair, 
To disfranchise despair! 

Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength, 
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn; 

But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length 
Into wail such as this — and we sit on forlorn 
When the man-child is bom. 



312 nature's remorses. 

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east, 
And one of them shot in the west by the sea. 

Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast 
You want a great song for your Italy free, 
Let none look at me, 

[This was Laura Savio, of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose 
sons were killed at Ancona and Gaeta. ] 



NATURE'S REMORSES. 

Rome, 1861. 

Her soul was bred by a throne, and fed 
From the sucking-bottle used in her race. 
On starch and water (for mother's milk 
Which gives a larger growth instead). 
And, out of the natural liberal grace, 
Was swaddled away in violet silk. 

And young and kind, and royally blind. 
Forth she stepped from her palace-door 
On three-piled carpet of compliments, 
Curtains of incense drawn by the wind 
In between her for evermore 
And daylight issues of events. 

On she drew, as a queen might do. 
To meet a Dream of Italy, — 

Of magical town and musical wave, 
Where even a god, his amulet blue 
Of shining sea, in an ecstasy 

Dropt and forgot in a nereides cave. 



nature's remorses. 313 

DovsTi she goes, as the soft wind blows, 
To live more smoothly than mortals can, 
To love and to reign as queen and wife, 
To w^ar a crown that smells of a rose. 
And still, with a sceptre as light as a fan. 
Beat sweet time to the song of life. 

What is this'? As quick as a kiss 
Falls a smile from her girhsh mouth! 
The lion-people has left its lair. 
Roaring along her garden of bliss. 

And the fiery under-world of the south 
Scorched away to the upper air. 

And a fire-stone ran in the form of a man, 
Burningly, boundingly, fatal and fell, 

Bowling the kingdom down! Where was the king? 
She had heard somewhat, since life began. 
Of terrors on earth, and horrors in hell, 
But never, never of such a thing! 

You think she dropped when her dream was stopped. 
When the blotch of Bourbon blood inlay, 
Lividly rank, her new lord's cheek *? 
Not so. Her high heart overtopped 
The royal part she had come to play. 
Only the men in that hour were weak. 

And twice a wife by her ravaged life, 
And twice a queen by her kingdom lost. 

She braved the shock and the counter-shock 
Of hero and traitor, bullet and knife, 

While Italy pushed, like a vengeful ghost. 
That son of the Cursed from Gaeta's rock. 



314 nature's remorses. 

What will ye give her, who could not deliver, 
German Princesses'? A laurel- wreath 
All over-scored with your signatures, 
Graces, Serenities, Highnesses ever? . 

Mock her not, fresh from the truth of Death, 
Conscious of dignities higher than yours. 

What will ye put in your casket shut, 
Ladies of Paris, in sympathy's name? 

Guizofs daughter, what have you brought her? 
Withered immortelles, long ago cut 
For guilty dynasties perished in shame, 
Putrid to memory, Guizot's daughter? 

Ah poor queen! so young and serene! 

What shall we do for her, now hope's done, 
Standing at Rome in these ruins old. 
She too a ruin and no more a queen? 
Leave her that diadem made by the sun 
Turning her hair to an innocent gold. 

Ay, bring close to her, as 'twere a rose, to her. 

Yon free child, from an Apennine city 

Singing for Italy, — dumb in the place! 

Something like solace, let us suppose, to her 

Given, in that homage of wonder and pity. 

By his pure eyes to her beautiful face. 

Nature, excluded, savagely brooded; 

Ruined all queendom and dogmas of state: 
Then in reaction remorseful and mild. 
Rescues the womanhood, nearly eluded. 

Shows her what's sweetest in womanly fate — 
Sunshine from Heaven, and the eyes of a child. 



A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT. 515 



A ^^lUSICAL INSTRUMENT. 

What was he doing, the great god Pan, 

Do^^Tl in the reeds by the river? 
Spreading ruin and scattering ban. 
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, 
And breaking the golden lilies afloat 
With the dragon-fly on the river. 

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, 
From the deep cool bed of the river: 

The limpid water turbidly ran, 

And the broken lilies a-dying lay, 

And the dragon-fly had fled aw-ay, 
Ere he brought it out of the river. 

High on the shore sat the great god Pan, 

While turbidly flowed the river; 
And hacked and hewed as a great god can, 
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, 
Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed 
To prove it fresh from the river. 

He cut it short, did the great god Pan, 

(How tall it stood in the river I) 
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, 
Steadily from the outside ring. 
And notched the poor dry empty thing 

In holes, as he sat by the river. 



3l6 A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT. 

"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan, 

(Laughed while he sat by the river,) 
"The only way, since gods began 
To make sweet music, they could succeed." 
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, 
He blew in power by the river. 

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! 

Piercing sweet by the river! 
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! 
The sun on the hill forgot to die, 
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly 

Came back to dream on the river. 

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, 

To laugh as he sits by the river. 
Making a poet out of a man: 
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,— 
For the reed which grows nevermore again 

As a reed with the reeds in the river. 



THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH. 3 I 7 



THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH. 

Rome, May, 1861. 

"Now give us lands where the olives grow," 

Cried the North to the South, 
"Where the sun with a golden mouth can blow 
Blue bubbles of grapes down a vineyard-row!" 
Cried the North to the South. 

"Now give us men from the sunless plain," 

Cried the South to the North, 
"By need of work in the snow and the rain, 
Made strong, and brave by familiar pain!" 
Cried the South to the North. 

"Give lucider hills and intenser seas," 
Said the North to the South, 
"Since ever by symbols and bright degrees 
*'Art, childlike, climbs to the dear Lord's knees," 
Said the North to the South. 

"Give strenuous souls for belief and prayer," 

Said the South to the North, 
"That stand in the dark on the lowest stair. 
While affirming of God, ^He is certainly there/" 
Said the South to the North. 



3l8 THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH. 

"Yet oh, for the skies that are softer and higher!" 

Sighed the North to the South; 
"For the flowers that blaze, and the trees that aspire. 
And the insects made of a song or a fire!" 
Sighed the North to the South. 

"And oh, for a seer to discern the same!" 

Sighed the South to the North! 
"For a poefs tongue of baptismal flame. 
To call the tree or the flower by its name!" 
Sighed the South to the North. 

The North sent therefore a man of men 

As a grace to the South; 
And thus to Rome came Andersen. 
— ^^Alas^ hut must you take him again ?^* 

Said the South to the North. 



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Guy Deverell 2 v. 

Mark Lemon: Wait for the 

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fessions I V. Lord Kilgobbin 2 v. 

G. H. Lewes : Ranthorpe i v. 

Physiology of Common Life 2 v. On 
Actors and the Art of Acting 1 v. 

E. Lynn Linton : Joshua Da- 
vidson I V. Patricia Kemball 2 v. 
The Atonement of Leam Dundas 2 v. 
The World well Lost 2 v. Under 
which Lord? 2 v. With a Silken 
Thread etc. iv. Todhunters'atLoanin* 
Head etc. iv. " My Love 1" 2 v. The 
Girl of the Period, etc. i v. 

Laurence W. M. Lockhart: 

Mine is Thine 2 v. 

Longfellow : Poetical Works 

(w. portrait) 3 v. The Divine Comedy 
01 Dante Alighieri 3 v. The New- 
England Tragedies i v. The Divine 
Tragedy i v. Three Books of Song 
I V. The Masque of Pandora i v. 

M.Lonsdale : Sister Dora i v. 
A Lost Battle 2 v. 
Lutfullah : Autobiography of 

Lutfullah, by Eastwick i v. 

Lord Lytton: w^^Bulwer. 
Robert Lord Lytton (Owen 

Meredith): Poems 2 v. Fables in 
Song 2 V. 

Lord Macaulay: History of 

England (w. portrait) 10 v. Critical and 
Historical Essays 5 v. Lays of Ancient 
Rome IV. Speeches 2 v. Biographical 
Essays i v. William Pitt , Atterbury 
I V. (See also Trevelyan). 



Justin McCarthy : Waterdale 

Neighbours 2 v. Lady Disdain 2 v. 
Miss Misanthrope 2 v. A History of 
our own Times 5 v. Donna Quixote 2 v. 
A short History of our own Times 2 v. 

George MacDonald: Alec 

Forbes of Howglen 2 v. Annals of a 
Quiet Neighbourhood 2 v. David 
Elginbrod 2 v. The Vicar's Daugh- 
ter 2 V. Malcolm 2 v. St. George and 
St. Michael 2 V. The Marquis of Lossie 
2 V. Sir Gibbie 2 v. Mary Marston 2 v. 
The Gifts of the Child Christ, etc. iv. 
The Princess and Curdie i v. 

Mrs.Mackarness: Sunbeam 

Stories i v. A Peerless Wife 2 v. 
A Mingled Yarn 2 v. 

Charles McKnight ; Old Fort 

Duquesne 2 v. 

Norman Macleod: The old 

Lieutenant and his Son i v. 

Mrs. Macquoid: Patty 2 v. 

Miriam's Marriage 2 v. Pictures across 
the Channel 2 v. Too Soon i v. My 
Story 2 V. Diane 2 v. Beside the 
River 2 v. A Faithful Lover 2 v. 

"Mademoiselle Mori," Au- 
thor of— Mademoiselle Mori 2 v. 
Deniseiv. Madame Fontenoy i v. On 
the Edge of the Storm i v. The Atelier 
du Lys 2 V. In the Olden Time 2 v. 

Lord Mahon : vide Stanhope. 
E. S. Maine : Scarscliff Rocks 

"" ""k.BlachfordMansfield: The 

Log of the Water Lily i v. 

Mark Twain: The Adven- 
tures of Tom Sawyer i v. The In- 
nocents Abroad ; or, the New Pilgrims' 
Progress 2 v, A Tramo Abroad 2 v. 
** Roughing it" i v. The Innocents at 
Home I V. The Prince and the Pauper 
2V. The Stolen White Elephant, etc. 
I V, Life on the Mississippi 2 v. 
Sketches i v. 

Marmorne i v. 

Capt.Marryat: Jacob Faith- 
ful (w. portrait) i v. Percival Keene 
I V, Peter Simple i v. Japhet i v. 
Monsieur Violet i v. The Settlers 1 v. 
The Mission iv. The Privateer's-Man 



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Collection of British Authors Tauchnitz Edition, 



I V. The Children of the New-Forest 

1 V. Valerie i v. Mr. Midshipman 
Easy I V. The King's Own i v. 

Florence Marryat : Love's 

Conflict 2 V. For Ever and Ever 

2 V. The Confessions of Gerald 
Estcourt 2 V. Nelly Brooke 2 v. 
Verouique 2 v. Petronel 2 v. Her 
Lord and Master 2 v. The Prey of the 
Gods I V. Life of Captain Marryat i v. 
Mad Dumaresq 2 v. No Intentions 2 v. 
Fighting the Air 2 v. A Star and a 
Heart i v. The Poison of Asps i v. A 
Lucky Disappointment i v. My own 
Child 2 v. Her Father's Name 2 v. A 
Harvest of Wild Oats 2 v. A Little 
Stepson I v. Written in Fire 2 v. Her 
World against a Lie 2 v. A Broken 
Blossom 2V. The Root of all Evil 2 v. 
The Fair-haired Alda 2 v. With Cupid's 
Eyes 2 v. My Sister the Actress 2 v. 
Phyllida2V. How They Loved Him 2 v. 
Facing the Footlights (w. portrait) 2 v. 
A Moment of Madness i v. The 
Ghost of Charlotte Cray, etc. i v. 
Peeress and Player 2 v. 

Mrs. Marsh: Ravenscliffe2v. 

Emilia Wyndham 2 v. Castle Avon 
2 V. Aubrey 2 v. The Heiress of 
Haughton 2 v. Evelyn Marston 2 v. 
The Rose of Ashurst 2 v. 

Emma Marshall : Mrs. Main- 

waring's Journal i v. Benvenuta i v. 
Lady Alice i v. Dayspring i v. Life's 
Aftermath i v. 

Helen Mathers: ** Cherry 

Ripe !" 2 V. "Land o' the Leal" i v. 
My Lady Green Sleeves 2 v. As he 
comes up the Stair, etc. i v. Sam's 
Sweetheart 2 v. 

"Mehalah/^ Author of— 

Mehalah i v. John Herring 2 v. 

Whyte Melville: Kate Cov- 
entry I v. Holmby House 2 v, 
Digby Grand i v. Good for No- 
thhig 2 V. The Queen's Maries 2 v. 
The Gladiators 2 v. The Brookes 
of Bridleraere 2 v. Cerise 2 v. The 
Interpreter 2 v. The White Rose 2 v. 
M. orN. IV. Contraband; or A Losing 
Hazard I v. Sarchedon2V. Uncle John 
2 V. Katerfelto i v. Sister Louise i v. 
Rosine i v. Roy's Wife 2 v. Black but 
Comely 2 V. Riding Recollections i v. 



George Meredith: The Or- 
deal of Feverel 2 v. Beauchamp's 
Career 2 v. The Tragic Comedians i v. 

Owen Meredith :z//^^ Robert 
Lord Lytton. 

Milton: Poetical Works i v. 
. "Miss Molly/' Author of— 

Geraldine Hawthorne i v. 

"Molly Bawn/' Author of— 

Molly Bawn 2 v. Mrs. Geoffrey 2 v. 
Faith and Unfaith 2 v. Portia 2 v. 
Loys, Lord Berresford, etc. i v. Her 
First Appearance, etc. iv. Phyllis 2 v. 
Rossmoyne 2 v. 

Miss FlorenceMontgomery: 

Misunderstood i v. Thrown Together 
2 V. Thwarted i v. Wild Mike i v. 
Seaforth 2 v. The Blue VeU i v. 

Moore: Poetical Works (w. 
portrait) 5 v. 

Lady Morgan's Memoirs 3 v. 

Henry Morley: Of Enghsh 
Literature in the Reign of 
Victoria. With Facsimiles of the 
Signatures of Authors in the 
Tauchnitz Edition [v. 2000]. 

E. C. Gr en ville : Murray : The 

Member for Paris 2 v. Young Brown 
2 V. The Boudoir Cabal 3 v. Frenc.i 
Pictures in English Chalk (ist Serie^) 
2v. TheRussians of To-day IV. French 
Pictures in English Chalk (2nd Series) 
2 V. Strange Tales i v. That Artful 
Vicar 2 v. Six Months in the Ranks i v. 
People I have met i v. 

" My little Lady/' Author of— 
vide E. Frances Poynter. 
New Testament [v. looo]. 
Mrs.Newby: Common Sense 

2 v. 

Dr. J. H. Newnian : Callista i v. 
"NinaBalatka/^ Author of— 
vide Anthony Trollope. 

"No Church," Author of-No 

Church 2 V, Owen : — a Waif 2 v. 

Lady Augusta Noel: From 

Generation to Generation i v. 



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Hon. Mrs . Norton : Stuart of 

Dunleath 2 v. Lost and Saved 2 v. 
Old Sir Douglas 2 v. 

Novels andTales z//d^^House- 
hold Words. 

Not Easily Jealous 2 v. 

Laurence Olipliant : Altiora 
Peto 2 V. 

Mrs. Oliphant: Passages in 

the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland 
of Sunnyside i v. The Last of the 
Mortimers 2 v. Agnes 2 v. Madonna 
Mary 2 v. The Minister's Wife 2 v. 
The Rector, and the Doctor's Family 
IV. Salem Chapel 2 V. The Perpetual 
Curate 2 v. Miss Marjoribanks 2 v. 
Ombra 2 v. Memoir of Count de 
Montalembert 2 v. May 2 v. In- 
nocent 2 v. For Love and Life 2 v. 
A Rose in June i v. The Story of Valen- 
tine and his Brother 2 v. Whiteladies 
2 V. The Curate in Charge i v. Phoebe, 
Junior 2 v. Mrs. Arthur 2 v. Carita 2 v. 
Young Musgrave 2 v. The Primrose 
Path 2 v. Within the Precincts 3 v. 
The greatest Heiress in England 2 v. 
He that will not when he may 2 v. 
Harry Joscelyn 2 v. In Trust 2 v. It 
was a Lover and his Lass 3 v. The 
Ladies Lindores 3 v. 

Ossian: Poems i v. 

Ouida: Idalia2v. Tricotrin2v. 

Puck 2 v. Chandos2V. Strathmore2 v. 
Under two Flags 2 v. Folle-Farine 
2 V. A Leaf in the Storm ; A Dog of 
Flanders and other Stories i v. Cecil 
Castlemaine's Gage i v. Madame la 
Marquise i v. Pascarel 2 v. Held in 
Bondage 2 v. Two little Wooden Shoes 
IV. Signa (w. portrait) 3 v. In a Winter 
City I v. Ariadne 2 V. Friendship 2 v. 
Moths 3 V, Pipistrello i v. A Village 
Commune 2V, InMaremma3V. Bimbi 
I V. Wanda 3 v. Frescoes, etc. i v. 

Miss Parr (Holme Lee) : Basil 

Godfrey's Caprice 2 v. For Richer, 
for Poorer 2 v. The Beautiful Miss 
Barrington 2 v. Her Title of Honour 

1 V. Echoes of a Famous Year i v. 
Katherine's Trial i v. Bessie Fairfax 

2 v. Ben Milner's Wooing i v. 
Straightforward 2 v. Mrs. Denys of 
Cote 2 v. A Poor Squire i v. 



Mrs. Parr: Dorothy Fox i v. 

The Prescotts of Pampliillon 2 v. 
Gosau Smithy 1 v. Robin 2 v. 

"Paul Ferroll/' Author of— 

Paul Ferroll i v. Year after Year i v. 
Why Paul Ferroll killed his Wife 1 v. 

James Payn: Found Dead 

1 v. Gwendoline's Harvest i v. 
Like Father, like Son 2 v. Not 
Wooed, but Won 2 v. Cecil's Tryst 
IV. A Woman's Vengeance 2 v. 
Murphy's Master 1 v. In the Heart 
of a Hill I V. At Her Mercy 2 v. 
The Best of Husbands 2 v. Wal- 
ter's Word 2 V, Halves 2 v. Fallen 
Fortunes 2 v. What He cost Her 2 v. 
By Proxy 2 v. Less Black than we're 
Painted 2 v. Under one Roof 2 v. 
HighSpirits i v. High Spirits (Second 
Series) i v. A Confidential Agent 2 v. 
From Exile 2 v. A Grape from a Thorn 

2 V. Some Private Views i v. For 
Cash Only 2 v. Kit: A Memory 2 v. 
The Canon's Ward 2 v. 

MissFr.M.Peard: One Year 

2 V. The Rose-Garden 1 v. Unawares 
I V. Thorpe Regis i v. A Winter 
Story IV. A Madrigal i v. Cartouche 
I V. Mother Molly i v. Schloss and 
Town 2 V. Contradictions 2 v. 

Bishop Percy: Reliques of 

Ancient English Poetry 3 v. 

E. A. Poe : Poems and Essays. 

Edited with a new Memoir by John 
H. Ingram 1 v. Tales. Edited by 
John H. Ingram i v. 

Pope: Select Poetical Works 

(w. portrait) i v. 

E.Frances Poynter: My little 

Lady 2 v. Ersilia 2 v. Among the 
Hills I V. 

Mrs. E. Prentiss: Stepping 

Heavenward i v. 

The Prince Consort's 

Speeches and Addresses i v. 

Horace N. Pym : vide C. Fox. 
W. F. Rae: Westward by 

Rail I V. 

Charles Reade: "It is never 

too late to mend" 2 v. "Love me little 
love me long" IV, The Cloister and the 
Hearth 2 v. Hard Cash 3 V. PutYour- 



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self in his Place 2 v. A Terrible 
Temptation 2 v. Peg Woffington i v. 
Christie Johnstone i v. A Simpleton 
2 V. The Wandering Heir i v. A 
Woman-Hater 2 v. Readiana i v. 

" Recommended to Mercy," 
Author of — Recommended to 
Mercy 2 v. Zoe's ' Brand ' 2 v. 

James Rice : videVsf, Besant. 

Alfred Bate Richards: So 

very Human 3 v. 

Richardson: Clarissa Har- 

lowe 4 V. 

Mrs.Riddell(F.G.TrafFord) : 
George Geidi of Fen Comt 2 v. 
Maxwell Drewitt 2 v. The Race 
for Wealth 2 v. Far above Rubies 
2 V. The Earl's Promise 2 v. 
Mortomley's Estate 2 v. 

Rev. W. Robertson: Ser- 
mons 4 V. 

Charles H. Ross : The Pretty 

Widow IV. A London Romance 2 v. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: 

Poems I V. Ballads and Sonnets i v, 
J. Ruffini : Lavinia 2 v. Doctor 
Antonio i v. Lorenzo Benoni i v. 
Vincenzo 2 v. A Quiet Nook i v. 
The Paragreens on a Visit to Paris 

1 V. Carlino and other Stories i v. 

W. Clark Russell : A Sailor's 

Sweetheart 2 v. The **Lady Maud" 2 v, 
A Sea Queen 2 v. 

G. A. Sala: The Seven Sons 

of Mammon 2 v. 

John Saunders : Israel Mort, 

Overman 2 v. The Shipowner's 
Daughter 2 v. 

Katherine Saunders: Joan 

Merryweather and other Tales i v. 
Gideon's Rock i v. The High Mills 

2 V. Sebastian i v. 

Sir Walter Scott: Waverley 

(w. portrait) i v. The Antiquary i v. 
Ivanhoeiv. Kenilworth i v. Quentin 
Durward i v. Old Mortality i v, 
Guy Mannering i v. Rob Roy i v. 
The Pirate i v. The Fortunes of Nigel 
1 V. The Black Dwarf; A Legend of 



Montrose i v. The Bride of Lammer- 
moor I V. The Heart of Mid-Lothian 
2 V. The Monastery i v. The 
Abbot I V. Peveril of the Peak 2 v. 
The Poetical Works 2 v. Woodstock 

1 v. The Fair Maid of Perth i v. 
Anne of Geierstein i v. 

Professor Seeley: Life and 

Times of Stein 4 v. The Expansion 
of England i v. 

Miss Sewell: Amy Herbert 

2 V. Ursula 2 v. A Glimpse of 
the World 2 v. The Journal of a 
Home Life 2 v. After Life 2 v. The 
Experience of Life; or, AuntSarah2v. 

Shakespeare : Plays and 
Poems (w. portrait) (Second 
Editio7i) compl. 7 v. 

Shakespeare' s Plays may also be 
had in 37 numbers, at M. 0,30. 
each number. 

Doubtful Plays i v. 

Shelley : A Selection from his 
Poems I V. 

Nathan Sheppard: Shut up 
in Paris (Second Edition, en- 
larged) I V. 

Sheridan : Dramatic Works i v. 

J. Henry Shorthouse : John 
Inglesant 2 v. 

Smollett: The Adventures 01 
Roderick Random i v. The Ex- 
pedition of Humphiy Clinker I v. 
The Adventures of Peregrine 
Pickle 2 V. 

Earl Stanhope (Lord Mahon): 
History of England 7 v. The 
Reign of Queen Anne 2 v. 

Sterne : The Life andOpinions 
of Tristram Shandy I v. A Senti- 
mental Tourney (w. portrait) I v. 

"Still Waters/' Author of— 
Still Waters I v. Dorothy i v. 
De Cressy i v. Uncle Ralph i v. 
Maiden Sisters iv. Martha Browii 
I V. Vanessa i v. 



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Collection of British Authors Tauchnitz Edition, 



M. C. Stirling: Two Tales of 

Married Life 2 v. Vol. II, A True Man, 
Vol. I. vide G. M. Craik. 

'•^The Story of Elizabeth," 
Author of— V, Miss Thackeray. 

Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe: 
Uncle Tom's Cabin (w. portrait) 
2 V. A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin 
2 V. Dred 2 v. The Minister's 
Wooing I V. Oldtown Folks 2 v. 

"Sunbeam Stories," Author 
of— vide Mackarness. 

Swift: Gulliver's Travels i v. 

J. A. Symonds : Sketches in 

Italy I V. New Italian Sketches i v. 

Baroness Tautphoeus: Cy- 
rilla 2 V. The Initials 2 v. Quits 
2 V. At Odds 2 V. 

Colonel Meadows Taylor: 
'I'ara : a Mahratta Tale 3 v. 

Templeton : Diary & Notes I v. 

Lord Tennyson : Poetical 
Works 7 v. Queen Mary i v. 
Harold I v. Ballads and other 
Poems I V, 

W. M. Thackeray: Vanity 
Fair 3 v. The History of Pen- 
dennis3v. Miscellanies 8 v. The 
History of Henry Esmond 2 v. 

The English Humourists i v. The New- 
comes 4V. The Virginians 4V. The Four 
Georges ; Level the Widower i v. The 
Adventures of Philip 2 v. Denis Duval 
TV. Roundabout Papers 2 v. Catherine 
I V. The Irish Sketch Book 2 v. The 
Paris Sketch Book (w. portrait) 2 v. 

Miss Thackeray : The Story of 

Elizabeth i v. The Village on the 
Cliff I v. Old Kensington 2 v. Blue- 
beard's Keys I V. Five Old Friends 
I V. Miss Angel i v. Out of the 
World I V. Fulham Lawn i v. From 
an Island iv. Da Capo iv. Madame 
de Sevigne i v. A Book of Sibyls i v. 

Thomas a Kempis: The 

Imitation of Christ i v. 



A. Thomas : Denis Donne 2 v. 

On Guard 2 v. Walter Goring 2 v. 
Played out 2 v. Called to Account 2 v. 
Only Herself 2 v. A narrow Escape 2 v. 

Thomson: Poetical Works 
(with portrait) I v. 

F. G. Trafford: vide Mrs. 
Riddell. 

G. O. Trevelyan; The Life 

and Letters of Lord Macaulay (w. 
portrait) 4 v. Selections from the 
Writings of Lord Macaulay 2 v. 

Trois-Etoiles : vide Murray. 

Anthony Trollope: Doctor 

Thome 2 v. The Bertrams 

2 V. The Warden i v. Barchester 
Towers 2 v. Castle Richmond 2 v. 
The West Indies i v. Framley 
Parsonage 2 v. North America 

3 V. OrleyFarm 3 v. Rachel Ray 

2 v. The Small House at Ailing- 
ton 3 V. Can you forgive her? 

3 V. The Belton Estate 2 v. Nina 
Balatka I v. The Last Chronicle 
of Barset 3 v. The Claverings 2 v. 
Phineas Finn 3 v. He knew he 
was Right 3 v. The Vicar of Bull- 
hampton 2 v. Sir Harry Hotspur 
of Humblethwaite i v. Ralph the 
Heir 2 v. The Golden Lion of 
Granpere iv. Australia and New Zea- 
land 3 v. Lady Anna 2 V. Harry Heath- 
cote of Gangoil i v. The Way we live 
now 4 V. The Prime Minister 4 V. The 
American Senators v. South Africa 2 v. 
Is he Popenjoy? 3 v. An Eye for an 
Eye I V. John Caldigate 3 v. Cousin 
Henry i v. The Duke's Children 3 v. 
Dr. Wortle's School iv. Ayala's Angel 
3V. The Fixed Period I v. Marion Fay 
2 V. Kept in the Dark i v. Frau Froh- 
mann, etc. i v. Alice Dugdale, etc. i v. 
La Mere Bauche, etc. i v. The 
Mistletoe Bough, etc. i v. An Auto- 
biography I v. 

T. Adolphus Trollope : The 

Garstangs of Garstang Grange 2 v. 
A Siren 2 v. 



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The Two Cosmos i v. 

" Vera/^ Author of — Vera i v. 
The Hotel du Petit St. Jean i v. 
Blue Roses 2 v. Within Sound 
of the Sea 2 V. 

Victoria R. L: vide Leaves. 

Virginia i v. 

L.B. Walford: Mr. Smith 2 v. 
Pauline 2 V. Cousins 2 v. Trouble- 
some Daughters 2 v. 

Mackenzie Wallace : Russia 

Eliot Warburton: The Cres- 
cent and the Cross 2 v. Darien2v. 

S, Warren : Passages from the 
Diary of a late Physician 2 v. Ten 
Thousand a-Year 3 v. Now and 
Then i v. The Lily and the Bee i v. 

"Waterdale Neighbours/^ 

Author of — vide J. McCarthy. 

Miss Wetherell: The wide, 

wide World i v. Queechy 2 v. The 
Hills of the Shatemuc 2 v. Say and 
Seal 2 V. The Old Helmet 2 v. 
A Whim and its Consequences 

1 V. 

Walter White : HoHdays in 

Tyrol I V. 

"Who Breaks— Pays/' Au- 
thor of — vide Mrs. Jenkin. 
J. S. Winter: Regimental 

Legends i v. 

Mrs. Henry Wood: East 
Lynne 3 v. The Channings 
2v. Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles 

2 V. Verner's Pride 3 v. The 
Shadow of Ashlydyat 3 v. Trevlyn 
Hold 2 V. Lord Oakburn's Daugh- 
ters 2 V. Oswald Cray 2 v. Mildred 
Arkell 2 v. St. Martin's Eve 2 v. 
Elster'sFolly2v. Lady Adelaide's 
Oath 2 V. Orville College I v. A 



Life's Secret i v. The Red Court 
Farm 2 v. Anne Hereford 2 v. 
Roland Yorke 2 v. George Canter- 
bury's Will 2 V. Bessy Rane 2 v. 
Dene Hollow 2 v. The Foggy 
Night at Offord etc. I v. Within 
the Maze 2 v. The Master of 

Greylands 2 v. Johnny Ludlow {First 
Series) 2 v. Told in the T\vilight 
2 V. Adam Grainger i v. Edina 2 v. 
Pomeroy Abbey 2 v. Lost in the Post 
etc. By Johnny Ludlow 1 v. A Tale 
of Sin etc. By Johnny Ludlow 1 v. 
Anne etc. By Johnny Ludlow i v. 
Court Netherleigh 2 v. 

Wordsworth : Select Poetical 
Works 2 V. 

Lascelles Wraxall: Wild 
Oats I V. 

Edm. Yates: Land at Last 
2 V. Broken to Harness 2 v. 
The Forlorn Hope 2 v. Black 
Sheep 2 V. The Rock Ahead 
2 V. Wrecked in Port 2 v. Dr. 
Wainwright's Patient 2 v. No- 
body's Fortune 2 v. Castaway 2 v. 
A Waiting Race 2 v. The Yellow Flag 
2v. The Impending Sword 2 v. Two, 
by Tricks i v. A SUent Witness 2 v. 

Miss Yonge: The Heir of 
Redclyffe 2 v. Heartsease 2 v. 
The Daisy Chain 2 v. Dynevor 
Terrace 2 v. Hopes and Fears 
2 V. The Young Step-Mother 
2 V. The Trial 2 v. The Clever 
Woman of the Family 2 v. The 
Dove in the Eagle's Nest 2 v. 
The Danvers Papers ; the Prince and 
the Page i v. The Chaplet of Pearls 
2 V. The two Guardians i v. The Caged 
Lion 2 V. The Pillars of the House 5 v. 
Lady Hester i v. My Young Alcides 
2v. The Three Brides 2 V. Womankind 
2 V. Magnum Bonum 2 v. Love and 
Life I V, Unknown to History 2 v. 
Stray Pearls (w. portrait) 2 v. 



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Collection of German Authors Tauchnitz Edition, 



Collection of G 

B. Aiierbach: On the Heights. 
Transl. by F. E. Bimnett. Second 
Authorized Edition, thoroughly 
revised, 3 v. Brigitta. From the 
German by C. Bell, I v. Spinoza. 
From the German byNicholson, 2 v. 

G, Ebers : An Egyptian Prin- 
cess. Translated byE. Grove, 2 v. 
Uarda. From the German by Bell, 
2 V. Homo Sum. From the Ger- 
man by Bell , 2 v. The Sisters. 
From the German by Bell, 2 v. 

Foil que: Undine, Sintram, etc. 
Translated byF. E. Bunnett, I v. 

Ferdinand Freiligrath: 
Poems. From the German. 
Edited by his D a u g h t e r. S econd 
Copyright Edition, enlarged, I v. 

W.Gorlach: Prince Bismarck 
(with Portrait). From the Ger- 
man by Miss M. E. vonGlehn, iv. 

Goethe: Faust. Fromthe Ger- 
man by John Anster, LL.D. IV. 
Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice- 
ship. From the German by 
Eleanor Grove, 2 v. 

K. Gutzkow: Through Night 
to Light. From the German by 
M. A. Faber, i v. 

F. W. Hacklander: Behind 
the Counter [Hand el u.Wandel]. 
From the German by Howitt, I v. 

W.Hauff: Three Tales. From 
the German by M. A. Faber, i v. 

P. Heyse: L'Arrabiata and 
other Tales. From the German 
by M. Wilson, i v. The Dead 
Lake and other Tales. From the 
German by Mary Wilson, i v. 
Barbarossa and other Tales. From 
the German by L. C. S., i v. 



erman Authors. 

Wilhelmine von Hillern: 
The Vulture Maiden [die Geier- 
Wally]. From the German by 
C. Bell and E. F. Poynter, i v. 
The Hour will come. From the 
German by Clara Bell, 2 v. 

S. Kobn : Gabriel. A Story 
of the Jews in Prague. From the 
German by A. Milman, M.A., I v. 

G. E. Lessing: Nathan the 
Wise and Emilia Galotti. The 
former transl. by W. Taylor, the 
latter by Chas. Lee Lewes, I v. 

E.Marlitt: The Princess of the 
Moor [das ITaideprinzesschen], 

2 V. 

Maria Nathusius: Joachim 
von Kamern and Diary of a poor 
young Lady. From the German 
by Miss Thompson, i v. 

Fritz Reuter: In the Year '13 : 
Transl. from the Platt-Deutsch 
by Chas. Lee Lewes, i v. An 
old Story of my Farming Days 
[Ut mine Stromtid]. From the 
German by M. W.Macdowall, 3V. 

Jean Paul Friedr. Richter: 
Flower, Fruit an d Thorn Pieces : 
or the Married Life, Death, and 
Wedding of the Advocate of the 
Poor, Firmian Stanislaus Sieben- 
kas. Translated from the Ger- 
man by E. PI. Noel, 2 v. 

J. V. Scheffel: Ekkehard. A 

Tale of the tenth Century. Translated 
from the German by Sofie Delfils, 2 v. 

G. Taylor : Klytia. From the 

German by Sutton Fraser Corkran, 2 v. 

H. Zschokke : The Princess of 

Brunswick- Wolfenbuttel and other 
Tales. From the German by M. A. 
Faber, 1 v. 



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Series for the Young. 

Lady Barker: Stories About. 
With Frontispiece, i v. 

Louisa Charlesworth : Mi- 
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Our Year, llhistrated by C. 
Dobell, I V. Three Tales for 
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by B. Plockhorst, I v. 

Miss G. M. Craik: Cousin 
Trix. With a Frontispiece by 
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Maria Edgeworth : Moral 
Tales. With a Frontispiece by 
B. Plockhorst, I v. Popular 
Tales. With a Frontispiece by 
B. Plockhorst, 2 v. 

Bridget & Julia Kavanagh : 

The Pearl Fountain With a Frontis- 
piece by B. Plockhorst, i v. 

Charles and Mary Lamb: 

Tales from Shakspeare. With the 
Portrait of Shakspeare, i v. 

Emma Marshall: Rex and 

Regina; or. The Song of the River. 
With six Illustrations, i vol. 

Captain Marryat : ^vLister- 

man Ready; or, the Wreck of the 
Pacific. With Frontispiece, i v. 

Florence Montgomery : The 

Town-Crier; to which is added: The 
Children with the Indian-Rubber Ball, 



—Each volume 1 Mark 60 Pf. 
Ruth and her Friends. A Story 

for Girls. With Frontispiece, i v. 

iVIrs. Henry Wood: William 

Allair; or. Running away to Sea. 
Frontispiece from a Drawing by F. 
Gilbert, i v. 

Miss Yonge: Kenneth; or, 
the Rear- Guard of the Grand 
Army. With Frontispiece, I v. 
The Little Duke. Ben Sylvester's 
Word. With a Frontispiece by 
B. Plockhorst, I v. TheStokesley 
Secret. With a Frontispiece by 
B. Plockhorst, I v. Countess 
Kate. With Frontispiece, i v. 
A Book of Golden Deeds. With 
a Frontispiece by B. Plockhorst, 
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Frontispiece, I v. Henrietta's 
Wish; or. Domineering. A Tale. 
With a Frontispiece by B. Plock- 
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Frontispiece, i v. The Lances of 
Lynwood; the Pigeon Pie. With 
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With Frontispiece, i v. Aunt 
Charlotte's Stories of English 
History. With Frontispiece, i v. 
Bye- Words. With a Frontispiece 
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Tauchnitz Manuals of Conversation. 
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Neiies Handbuch der Engli- 

schen Conversationssprache von 
A. Schlessing. 

A new Manual of the German 

Language of Conversation by 
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sischen Conversationssprache von 
/.. Rollin. 

Nouveau Manuel de la Con- 
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L. Rollin et Wolfgang Weber. 



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